


the gentle art of making enemies: cigarettes

by jar



Series: the gentle art of making enemies [2]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:22:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jar/pseuds/jar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hitman!AU proper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the gentle art of making enemies: cigarettes

Brad wakes up to the sound of his apartment's front door clicking shut. His fingertips brush the cold metal of his M9 before his brain engages properly. It's too early for this shit.

He feigns sleep and listens.

It's around when the toaster pops he loosens his grip on his gun, and slides his hand out from under his pillow. Of course.

"Ray," Brad calls out, "why are you in my apartment?"

He can smell toast and take-away coffee.

"Because you gave me a key!" Ray yells. There's a clatter of plates and the fridge door slams.

"No, I did not give you a key."

Brad would definitely remember that.

He doesn't tell people his address, let alone hand out keys.

Brad's apartment is on the third floor of an anonymous, brick-faced apartment block populated by a few ancient women who appear to have been here since time began. There are some small family units with one or two unfathomable small children who appear to think it's funny to giggle and hide if he passes them in the hall. It's not the kind of place anyone would associate with Brad. Brad likes it well enough; it's not home, but there's no drug dealers or domestics and no one bothers Brad except the old woman on his floor who bakes inedible sultana muffins he’s fairly sure could double as ammo for a Mk19.

Where he lives is need-to-know information. Need-to-know information that Ray had wheedled out of him the first week they'd met, and Brad distinctly remembers periodically wondering _what_ the fuck he was thinking for several days after telling the skinny tweaker newbie his address.

At least he'd still never opened his mouth about his safe house.

Ray pokes his head into the bedroom then steps in. The doorway is white around him, framing a smug little picture. Ray settles himself shoulder to wrist against the doorframe, wearing yesterdays clothes and messy hair, carrying all the baggage of a small airport under his dark eyes.

Ray smiles close-mouthed at Brad and Brad's own mouth twitches back without his consent.

Ray's clearly slept through the comedown from whatever he'd ingested previous to their last little job for Nate. He's slowed down a lot.

He hasn’t got that haunted look he gets sometimes when he’s coming down; his eyes are bright above the gunpowder grey smudges, and Brad is thankful. Dealing with a crashing Ray isn’t on his list of favourite things to do. There are few things in the world that make Brad feel helpless, fewer still he’d ever admit to (small children, small animals and anything else he can’t employ any of his perfectly sound problem-solving strategies on and ignore, insult or shoot), but one is Ray on a Suicide Tuesday.

Brad smiles a little wider in satisfaction at the thought of it, three little bodyguards all in a row, in and out in ten minutes. Nate had been pleased, too, and Brad got the feeling he'd felt the fat bastard deserved whatever warning Godfather had wanted him to send.

"Come on, Brad, tell me you don't just use a single lock sans even the most _basic_ of boobytrapping just for your Ray-Ray," Ray says, as if that's exactly the same thing as handing him a key. He tilts his head to look up from under dark lashes.

Idiot.

"Maybe," Brad shifts and stretches and screws his eyes shut for one dark, comfortable second.

His bare foot pokes out the end of the sheets, and when he opens his eyes Ray's looking at it and smiling. Brad wriggles his toes.

"Maybe," Brad repeats before Ray can make yet another joke about Brad's height relative to the size of his (perfectly adequate) bed, "in your socially retarded, whiskey-tango hometown that's like me handing you a key," Brad pauses for breath and sits up, sheets sliding off his chest.

Ray brings his hand up to his mouth and chews his thumbnail through a grin, and Brad watches his gaze slide off Brad's face, to his chest, to the floor. Brad ignores this.

"By your whisky-tango retard logic, that’s somehow like giving you a key. Tell me, Ray, if I buy your uncle-daddy-cousin a pig does that mean we're engaged?"  
"Don't be ridiculous, homes," Ray says as if Brad's just suggested something truly insane, like he should close his mouth when he's chewing, "I'm worth at least three pigs."

Brad snorts and flicks the sheets off, the bed and gets up, and when he looks up from tugging on some sweats, Ray's disappeared.

Brad wanders out into his living room, yawning. Ray’s taken up residence on the ugly, floral print couch that came with the apartment, has his knees curled up and his plate balanced on top. He’s getting crumbs everywhere.

"Weren't you making toast?" Brad asks, leaning his knees against the back of the couch and looking down at Ray.

"Yeah," Ray says, "for me," he lies around a mouthful of bread, and leans his head back to smile with toast chewed to a disgusting paste between his teeth. "Yours on the bench."

"If you could refrain from spitting fragments of half-masticated breakfast food all the fuck over my couch, Ray….”

Brad wanders the few feet over to the kitchen bench and plucks the coffee off it, ignores the toast.

"I bring you breakfast and this is the thanks I get!" Ray spits toast all the fuck over Brad's couch, and his floor, to Brad's complete lack of surprise.

"You're lucky I didn't shoot you when you broke in," Brad says.

Ray rolls his eyes so hard it looks like it's got to hurt, swallows and crams more toast into his mouth.

Brad gives him a blank-faced stare of judgement and takes a sip of his coffee. The coffee is good, but it always is when Ray brings it. This is because Brad cannot bring himself to actually speak aloud some of the bullshit on the prissy coffee shop menu, while Ray actually seems to take it as a challenge to see how many levels of bullshit foamless double Italian free rainforest hazelnut cream he can fit in one order.

"Fuck 'oo, Colbert. I'm using your shower," Ray says. He stands up and dusts his hands of crumbs directly onto Brad’s living room floor, and leaves his plate on the bench.

“ _Why_ exactly are you using my shower?” Brad asks. As far as he’s aware, Ray both prefers to avoid showering until he absolutely must and also has a shower at his own apartment.

"I got laid last night,” Ray says, and wiggles his eyebrows. He looks at Brad, and Brad would like to shout _what the fuck are you telling me for_.

"Animal, mineral or vegetable?" Brad asks, instead. It falls a little flatter than he'd intended. Brad looks away from Ray when he first notices the faint red patch on his neck that’s most likely beard-burn. There’s not much point in looking any closer.

"Animal. Homosapien. Emphasis on the _homo_ ,” Ray says with a smirk. “But the fact I am feeling kinda crusty isn’t the only reason I need to borrow your shower. There’s a _thing_ at Nate’s, free food, free booze. Everyone’s invited.”

Brad frowns. Definitely beard-burn then.

“Yeah,” Ray says, and nods. “Some shit going down.”

“Go fucking shower, Ray,” Brad says. He’ll feel better when Ray’s showered.

Brad isn’t exactly pleased with the idea of a _thing_ at Nate’s, which is why he drops Ray’s dirty plate in the sink a little harder than he really needs to.

Not that he has a problem with attending a party at Nate’s apartment: the penthouse is fuck-ugly, but Brad doesn’t have to duck under doorways or break his back leaning down to wash his hands.

Brad is not overly fond of parties, but if Nate’s throwing a party at the penthouse, it’s because Godfather’s told him he’s throwing a party, and Godfather doesn’t throw parties for the fun and games. This’ll be about work as much as it is about play, which means the guest list will be interesting and likely less full of painfully retarded civilians than the usual fare.

Parties like this are bribes to get them all in the same room—all Brad’s fellow contractors on Godfather’s payroll—and it takes a bribe to get them all in the same room. Independence comes with the territory. You kill for a living, the last time you want to be is easily tracked down.

So this is something big, or Nate would have just called Brad.

By the time Ray’s out of the shower Brad has dug out some relatively dressy jeans from the back of his closet and is feeling decidedly _intrigued_ by whatever the actual reason for the invitation is. The potential for action has always left him feeling a little more awake, a little more alive.

“Where the fuck are your towels, Brad?” Ray calls from the bathroom. “I know you’re all superhuman and shit, but even you have to dry your nuts.”

Brad glances around and realises he’s left all his washing in the same plastic basket he’d brought it up from the downstairs machines in. He plucks a white towel from the top and opens the door a crack—

“Oh Brad, are you getting fresh with me?” Ray says in a squeals in a painful, cracked girlish voice.

“Take the towel before I come in there and hang you from the shower rail with it,” Brad says, thrusting his arm into the bathroom. Ray tugs it out of his grip and Brad pulls the door shut.

Ray opens the door a second later, towel tucked around his waist, dripping on Brad’s floor.

“Why the fuck did Nate call you instead of me?” Brad asks. It occurs to him abruptly that Nate never calls Ray, Nate calls Brad. Brad is Nate’s second, and Ray is Brad’s.

“Well thanks, Brad, that’s not insulting or anything,” Ray says. “Am I staying here in your bathroom forever, or do you plan on moving your Viking warrior statue ass out of my way any time soon?”

Brad just stares at Ray’s face, his wet hair hanging in stark black lines across his forehead, his cheeks flushed from hot water, until Ray starts talking again.

“He didn’t, you left your phone in my pocket after we iced those three bodyguards for Nate,” Ray says. He shakes his head like a dog and water spatters everywhere, including Brad’s face.

“Thank you,” Brad says dryly, and steps out of Ray’s way.

Ray’s left the bathroom looking like a football team have showered in there, together, in some kind of homoerotic orgy of destruction. There’s a water hazard the size of a small duck pond and his dirty clothes are draped from the edge of the sink along the floor, with his wife-beater half in the tub and soaking wet.

Brad steps in the main puddle with a splash and a sigh and picks up Ray’s jeans with one finger, reaching into the pocket and hoping his phone isn’t dead. It turns on when he tries it, though, so he doesn’t have to murder Ray.

“I’m showering!” Brad yells.

“I’m borrowing one of your shirts!” Ray yells back. “Mine got wet!”

Brad picks up the handtowel from where it’s been blown by Hurricane Ray to the corner of the bathtub and wipes the medicine cabinet mirror. He has to bend his knees to look at himself (everything in this apartment is built for circus midgets, he is fairly sure). He wipes sleep out of the corner of his eye and stares himself down for a minute, and doesn’t respond to Ray. Brad does not think about Ray, dressing himself in Brad’s clothes.

He switches the shower on and forces himself to duck under the showerhead without flinching at the cold. Ray’s used all the hot water.

* * *

Ray’s found what has to be the only sleeveless top in Brad’s entire wardrobe, and tied the straps at the back so it only looks huge on him, instead of ridiculously huge. It’s still long enough on him he looks like some wigger wannabe like Q-Tip, sans the do-rag. From the neck up he looks like every cliché of a gangster Brad’s ever seen on film, his dark hair slicked back in wave: half-Mafioso, half-greaser.

Brad glances back at the shirt: he’s failing at focusing on things that aren’t _Ray_ wearing _his_ shirt.

“You know you look like a retarded five year old that’s been allowed to dress himself for the first time?”

“Side-boob is so in right now,” Ray says, lifting his arm up. Brad glances at the gaping material, Ray’s sparsely inked chest, then away. The elevator isn’t mirrored, and he stares blankly at comforting cold steel.

Beside him, Ray shifts restlessly. The elevator dings loudly as they hit the top floor.

“Smells like you,” Rays says, and the elevator doors slide open, into Nate’s hallway and a mile of clean cream coloured carpet. Ray slips past Brad out the door.

Brad jams his hand between the doors as they start to slide closed, takes a deep breath, and follows.

* * *

Nate's apartment takes up an entire top floor. It's a soulless space, full of unblemished cream carpets, clean walls and clean lines. The only colour is on the walls in the form of repulsive modern art. There is a sculpture in the living room Brad wouldn't be opposed to converting into a urinal. The only things the penthouse has that doesn't deserve firebombing are its high ceilings and its balcony, which is large enough to fit Brad's entire apartment in. The view is beautiful, for a city view.

The penthouse reflects nothing of Nate Fick.

He looks as much a stranger here as anyone else in the mixed bunch, mostly likely because this _isn't_ Nate's place in the sense that he'd chosen it with its carpets that Brad is just waiting for Ray to tip something onto, this is Nate's place because Godfather has given it to him.

Nate isn't stupid enough to refuse a gift from Godfather, especially as he hadn't, as far as Brad knows, had anywhere to go after he'd handed in his Police badge to the wrong side.

No, Nate Fick isn't stupid, Nate is a survivor. There is no higher compliment to someone who's been outed as undercover in their business than if they’re still breathing. Not only is Nate living and breathing, but he'd gotten a promotion out of it. He likes Nate.

The place is filled with men Brad knows, everyone is smiling with a drink in hand. In one corner Brad can see Manimal with what could be Gazra in a headlock and a painting dangerously close to swinging off its hook behind them as they crash into a wall laughing at their friendly wrestle for dominance.

Brad locates Ray again by sound rather than sight.

"MEEEEESH," Ray yells across the room and ducks out of a loose circle of guys to make a beeline across the room for Meesh, who puts what is more likely to be a joint than a cigarette into his mouth and opens his arms.

Brad winces at the volume and watches a few people turn around and look then recognize Ray, and turn away with smiles or rolled eyes.

"Raymond, dude!" Meesh replies and hugs Ray, slapping him loudly on his bare shoulder.

Brad snorts. Outside eyes might see Meesh greeting Ray like an old friend, Brad sees Meesh's eyes rolling round like a slot machine and coming up dollar signs, jackpot. Meesh barely raises a half-hearted "dude," for people other than customers.

That their fondness is monetarily-motivated doesn't stop a hot flush creeping up the back of Brad's neck, and he snags a beer from the bar and opens it on the palm of his hand.

When he glances back, Ray and Meesh have their heads leaning towards each other conspiratorially, but there is distance enough between them for hands and goods to pass.

He would like to remind Ray he should probably stay sober until they see what this party is actually about, but experience tells him it's not worth trying.

Brad loses track of Ray as he notices Nate talking to Captain America. He has no choice but to rescue him from certain retardation.

Nate’s across the room, pinned into a corner by a dangerously animated looking Captain America — Dave to his face, simply because you don't insult someone spawned from the loins he was. If he hadn't had the luck to be born to one of Godfather's closest friends and allies, he would be dead.

Brad would quite happily have smile-killed the irritating sack of quivering shit himself, and that's only from hearing stories of how he is in the field from solid guys like Eric Kocher.

Nate is an interesting combination of honest and cunning. Brad would simply say intelligent, but Nate evidently has depths. He wonders, briefly, if it's something that Godfather thinks about; given Nate's beginnings, it would be ill-advised not to. Then again, evidence of Godfather's fondness for Nate is literally all around them. Friends close, enemies closer.

Brad shakes his head and sips his beer.

Captain America makes a gesture Brad recognizes as the universal kids-playing-war-with-machine-guns flail. Nate looks as if he'd welcome an accurate headshot. Or perhaps Brad is projecting, as Nate’s poker-face is pretty close to perfect-still.

Brad definitely feels a rescue coming on (let it never be said he's cold-hearted) and an opportunity to perform some reconnaissance on this party situation (let it also never be said he's not opportunistic).

He catches Nate's eye first, and Nate smiles behind a sip of his drink. Brad makes a two fingered gun gesture and squints one eye shut to sight the back of Captain America's head, and Nate's smile widens, genuine, but he shakes his head a little as if Brad was seriously offering (well, not very seriously).

Nate's blonde and pretty in a classically American way, and he looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, the same mouth that'd ordered Brad to kill for him forty-eight hours ago.

Brad sidles up to them and inserts himself in the conversation.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," he says, giving Captain America a short nod and intending that to be the last time he looks at him. "Nate." He watches Nate look politely interested and not overjoyed at the prospect of escape and thinks, oh yes, he's good. "I have something I need to discuss with you about the —" he glances sideways and clears his throat unconvincingly, "— in private, if possible, sir."

"Business at a party, Brad! Well you always have seemed very dedicated and there's nothing wrong with that, is there? Don't let him make you work too hard though, Nate," Captain America chuckles. Desperation and laughter make uncomfortable partners.

Brad says nothing, just watches Nate's face stay perfectly calm as he gives Captain America a small smile.

"Thanks, Dave," Nate says. Not a talk-to-you-later in sight.

Brad glances over his shoulder and watches Captain America makes his way towards Meesh.

"Are you sure you should be letting him buy anything from Meesh?" Brad says, not particularly concerned except that if he embarrasses himself no one is actually allowed to slap him back to reality.

"Meesh isn't holding," Nate says.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Meesh just sold something to Ray for a roll of bills and if it turns out to be sugar pills, I suspect Meesh is going to end up thrown off your delightful balcony," Brad says.

“Brad. Meesh isn't holding," Nate repeats and quirks the corners of his lips up.

Ah. A glance over his shoulder shows Meesh shrugging his shoulders apologetically and Captain America stalking away in a huff towards the bar.

"Good call, sir."

"You know you don't have to call me 'sir', Brad."

"I like calling you 'sir'," Brad says simply.

Nate waves his glass, carry on. Brad nods. He likes the distance it gives him from Nate, he likes the respect it implies. An alpha dog with everyone else in his life, he likes a solid reminder of the hierarchy here. He is fairly sure Nate understands.

"It’s nice to see you, Brad," Nate says. Brad salutes with his beer before taking a sip.

"I've always been told I have good timing," Brad says.

Nate just smiles, ignoring the opportunity to bitch about Captain America, ever the politician. Clever boy.

“Interesting guest list,” Brad says, glancing around the room and having to lift his beer three times as Kocher waves, Manimal and Chaffin hoot something unintelligible in his direction and Ray makes a face at him before he disappears into the hall, probably on his way toward the bathroom, to brief chemical oblivion, and to getting on everyone’s nerves for the next several hours.

Nate is watching him when he looks back.

“They love you,” he says.

“Like a litter of retarded puppies I just couldn’t bring myself to mercifully drown,” Brad says, feigning deep resignation and sighing for good measure. “Hope you’re prepared for when they start pissing on your rug.”

“Well-prepared,” Nate says.

Brad appreciates the fondness in his voice, something he finds in short supply from higher-ups. Brad has trained up, at a glance, fifty percent of the killers in this room, and those he hasn’t, he’s worked with. Nate looks as if he’s about to make his excuses.

Brad grabs the chance while he’s got it: “This isn’t just a chance to reunite me with the pack, though.”

Neither of them mention the disturbing thought that Captain America had been somewhat perceptive in his observations about Brad being all business. There’s nothing more frustrating than a clever idiot, but then a stopped clock is right twice a day.

“No,” Nate says and there’s a beat where Brad knows Nate’s expecting him to go on, but Brad finds, those are often the most interesting times to stay quiet. “No,” Nate repeats, “you’ll just have to be patient. Maybe even have fun.”

Touche.

“If you insist, sir.”

“I do,” Nate says, placing his watered down drink on the counter. Brad nods. Later it is. He can wait.

The place is open-plan, the kitchen and the lounge one unnecessarily huge area, with the kitchen tiled a similar colour to the cream carpet, but raised two steps higher. Brad finds himself leaning with his ass against the edge of the marble countertop and gazing out across the party. There’s a good view of everyone from here, the balcony the only thing behind them. The bathroom where Ray has most likely disappeared to isn’t visible either, but other than that, it’s an excellent position.

Nate sips his drink as if it’s pure ethanol, rather than obviously watered-down scotch, then places it on the bench with a click of glass on stone. There’s still half an inch of faintly amber liquid at the bottom and ice on top.

Nate, Brad observes, wants to stay sober, but wants to present a united front with the men. Sober means he wants to stay sharp; sober means, Brad guesses, it’s not small, whatever he has to tell them — or at least some of them, apparently definitely including Brad (not that Brad expected not to be included).

It’s got to be a major job, maybe a politician, a big contract they’ll want to talk out and maybe have to convince Nate they want. Or someone’s started a war, which would be even bigger (and, Brad supposes, worse, but the feeling in his stomach at the thought isn’t even in the same dictionary as worry or fear).

Or the option he isn’t pleased with, but it’s happened before and it will happen again (not to Brad’s guys, his record is 12 and 0): it could be one of them’s gone rogue, or departed without permission.

Brad casts a glance around from his perch at the kitchen bench assessing faces. He counts amongst the crowd every man he’s ever trained but for the dead. A lot of guys he knows are Pappy’s, too. Not a lot of unfamiliar faces, but that isn’t a surprise. Walt is there, too. Brad grins.

Walt Hasser isn’t any kind of traitor. The thought of Walt turning out to be some kind of multi-faced moustache-twirling villain actually makes him smile behind his next sip of beer.

He can’t see Encino Man, but that would just be too good to be true, being paid to end that dumbass. No Sixta, and Brad takes another sip of his beer and uncrosses and recrosses his legs at the ankle. Now he’s just getting stupid. Sixta is Godfather’s right hand. Time to stop speculating and just stay fucking frosty.

He looks at Nate’s glass, the ice melt watering down the alcohol even further, the condensation running off the cut crystal onto pale marble.

Or perhaps Nate’s been nursing one piss-weak drink all night because he isn’t stupid enough to wander around without a drink in his hand in a party Ray is at, as Ray generally takes the words 'designated driver' as a challenge, and an empty hand as an opportunity to spike a cup with piss, or make the world’s strongest, most off-recipe Long Island Ice Tea, depending on how much he likes you (Brad’s had Ray’s Long Island Ice Tea. It’s debateable which option means he likes you more).

When Brad surveys the crowd again, Rudy’s coming up the two steps into the kitchen at his ten o’clock. He’s grinning at Brad with pearly whites, looking like a commercial for cologne.

“Namaste, brother,” Rudy says. He holds out a fist and Brad bumps knuckles with him.

“Rudy,” Brad nods. Resists the urge to pick at the label of his beer despite the fact Ray (still) isn’t around to tell him he’s sexually frustrated and needs to bust a nut in some slut (Ray’s words). “Still on that bullshit pathway to enlightenment and homosexuality?”

"We’re all trying to reach our Zen, Brad, we just take different paths.” Rudy keeps on smiling.

Brad doesn’t resist rolling his eyes. His scorn won’t touch Rudy, which is about the only reason Rudy’s spiritual journey (and he can practically feel the sarcasm knocking on the back of his throat to be let out even thinking that) is tolerable. Rudy is Rudy, Fruity fucking Rudy.

And where there is a Rudy — Brad casts around and finds Pappy making his way over to them — there is a Pappy. All things in their right place. Rudy was Pappy’s first student, and the only one that’d never left the nest. Life partners — what kind, Brad would give less fucks than a nun about, except Ray speculates on the nature of their relationship at any given opportunity and has apparently infected Brad.

“Brad,” Pappy drawls and clicks the neck of his beer against Brad’s when Brad holds his out. Brad takes in Pappy’s face, which, strangely, is clean of the Ned Flanders facial hair he’d been sporting last time Brad had seen him. That was a few months ago.

Brad feels his lips quirk up in a smile.

“You shaved,” he points out.

“Weee-eeelll,” Pappy says, and shrugs like that’s an answer.

“I shaved it,” Rudy says with a smile. “He kept getting chai latte foam stuck in it.”

 _Ladies and gentlemen_ , Brad thinks, _Godfather’s (second) best sniper team_. He raises his eyebrows slightly at Pappy.

Pappy has the good sense to look somewhat chagrined, dipping his chin and taking a sip of beer, before he turns around and leans against the bench next to Brad, surveying the crowd. Rudy settles opposite them.

“You know Brad, I think you’d benefit from visualizing your Zen.”

“Why.” Brad cannot bring himself to make that a question.

“He thinks everyone’d benefit from finding their happy place,” Pappy says.

Brad tilts his head and looks at Pappy side on, watches him smiling at Rudy fondly.

Rudy shrugs, but doesn’t keep on with the new age hippy bullshit, which is enough to make Brad smile himself as he surveys the crowd again.

“So where’s Ray got to?” Pappy asks.

Like Brad has to know. Like Brad watching the crowd was in any way related to Ray’s presence or lack thereof.

As he glances over towards the hallway Ray had disappeared into earlier, though, he sees Ray poking his head around with a grin on his face before ducking back into the hall. Brad hides a grin in his drink.

“Found him,” he says. He nods towards the hallway.

Rudy turns around.

Ray comes back out of the hallway half dragging Jason Lilley until they nearly faceplant in the carpet, and end up holding each other up and laughing, a perpetual motion machine powered by chemicals and stupidity.

Lilley’s arm is over Ray’s shoulders and Ray’s is round Lilley’s waist.

Before Brad has a chance to take his leave of the conversation and go find Nate — who has wandered off, leaving his watered-down drink, while Brad was talking — so he doesn’t have to see Ray acting like a fool, Rudy’s calling “Ray!” across the room and waving him over with a big white grin.

Ray whoops loud enough Lilley winces beside him and they make their way up to Nate’s kitchen.

Brad doesn’t need to be close enough to see Ray’s eyes or his grin to know he’s high. Lilley, too. Lilley, whose arm is still wrapped over Ray’s shoulders. Both their faces are flushed as they bump fists with Pappy and Rudy in greeting.

Brad watches Lilley, arm over Ray’s back, thick fingers trailing into the ink on Ray’s arm, stroking black lines absently, a quick little back forth on Ray’s skin with the backs of his knuckles.

To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction, and Brad can’t help the reactions, but he can distance himself just enough he doesn’t do something stupid.

Lilley’s fingers drag across Ray’s skin.

Brad’s eyes narrow.

Ray says something to Brad, but makes no move to disentangle himself from Lilley.

Brad drags his eyes from Ray’s arm and meets Ray’s eyes for a beat, until Ray looks away with a too-wide grin.

Brad takes a sip of his drink, and doesn’t reply. He can’t speak to Ray right now, or he will undoubtedly say something he doesn’t want to.

“So what’re we talking about,” Ray asks. He slips out from under Lilley’s arm. Brad’s fingers relax on his empty beer bottle. Ray hops up on the counter opposite Brad and drums his feet against the door, likely leaving sneaker marks over its pristine surface.

Lilley shifts and leans beside him, close enough that Ray’s thigh is against this hip, brushing every time Ray swings his leg.

Brad’s jaw clenches. That’s fine.

“Meditation, my brother. Positive visualization and Zen,” Rudy says.

“Rudy, you are such a fuckin’ fag,” Ray says and cuffs at the back of Rudy’s head, only to have his wrist caught in a perfect hold and gently given back to him. Ray can fight, Brad knows, but Rudy even Brad would hesitate to get physical with empty-handed.

“Fuckin’ happy place bullshit,” Lilley snorts and digs in his pocket for his phone. Nothing much had ever stood out about Lilley when Brad has trained him, except his attachment to anything that can record video.

He’s an idiot with a camera, thinks he’ll never get nailed for some video he takes. Which is fine if you’re any punk with a camera phone who's bored and brawling on a Friday night, but Lilley is a trained killer and there’s bigger things at stake than a night in the sin bin.

Brad feels his top lip curl when Lilley holds his phone up, the little black eye of the camera up in Ray’s face. Ray opens his mouth and licks the lens.

Brad’s molars hurt from the pressure as he clenches his teeth momentarily.

Rudy seems to be attempting to explain the concept is less simple than “happy place”.

Ray interrupts with a smirk: “Happy place? My fuckin' happy place involves more jizz than a duvet at a pay by the hour motel, motherfucker!” He closes his eyes, opens his mouth and lets out an obscene moan towards Lilley’s camera phone. Lilley smirks behind the lens.

“You ever put that damn camera away, Jason?” Pappy asks.

Brad places his empty bottle on the bench beside himself.

Action, reaction, and control.

Brad closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them and watches the wall opposite them. Ignoring the flow of conversation around him is easy enough; focus has never been something he’s lacked. It’s helpful to think of keeping his eyes off Ray as a test.

Ray wearing Brad’s clothing, smelling like Brad’s antiperspirant, with Lilley’s hands on him.

His first thought is his bike, his house on the shore Brad keeps his baby, his first Ducati, the black 749, garaged at his little house on the beach (his insurance). Where he'd go if he had to go. Focusing on the blank space of wall across the room he thinks of cold grey waves and warm orange sun, sunrise and gulls, the white noise of waves and wind. It’s a pleasant thought. He thinks of the coast, taking the Ducati out on the looping roads that make it feel like you’re speeding along the edge of the world.

No one knows where it is. Ray doesn’t know where it is.

Brad tunes back into the conversation, and it’s immediately apparent that Zen, happy place, spiritual dicksuck bullshit is even less useful than Brad has originally assumed, placing it roughly on par with beat cops and dog shit.

"Where's my lighter?" Ray's got an unlit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, bobbling dangerously. He pats his pockets.

"You're poisoning your body, Ray," Rudy says. It’s amazing he can sound genuinely concerned, having known Ray nearly as long as Brad has.

"Rudy, my man, you know there are dudes who've been bitten by snakes enough times, they build up enough poison in their system or whatever, and they end up taking bites from these killer fucking pythons —"

"Pythons aren't poisonous," Brad points out quietly.

"Details, details, killer fucking... puff adders and shit, and they don't even break out in a fucking sweat _whereas_ any normal man would be fuckin’ dead, bam. They're immune. So am I, except you replace cobras with chemicals. I cannot be fucking killed by mere carcinogens, motherfuckers!" Ray throws his arms wide, narrowly misses smacking Lilley in the side of his head, and bangs both his heels against the cabinet at once, an audible exclamation mark. "I cannot be killed by anything! Except fucking nicotine cravings because I haven't got a goddamn lighter."

The cigarette wobbles on his bottom lip.

Lilley, miraculously, puts his phone down and finds a lighter. "Here man," he says and takes a step around Ray's swinging booted foot, and stands between Ray's open legs.

Brad stands straighter before he realises what he's doing. Pappy glances at him sidelong, Brad ignores him.

That's Ray's lighter Lilley's flicking open and lighting clumsily with his thumb, Brad knows it by sight, it's the same Zippo Ray's had the whole time Brad's known him.

Ray tilts his face upwards a little, smiling around his cigarette, poking his chin out to hold the end towards the flame in Lilley's hands and taking a brief drag before plucking it out of his mouth with two fingers.

"Thanks, Jay," Ray says.

Brad takes two steps forward and takes the lighter out of Lilley's hand without a word, meeting Lilley's wide eyes briefly and plastering a small close-mouthed smile on his face.

"I'll look after that," Brad says. Lilley takes a step back and raises his hands briefly, then smiles, runs a hand through his hair to cover the open palmed gesture that Brad reads submission into.

Ray turns and faces Brad with his cigarette in his mouth. He blows smoke out his nose, and stares at Brad for a minute, unsmiling. Ray's eyes are darker than normal. Dilated pupils, Brad seen it all before. He slips Ray's lighter into his pocket.

"I'm gonna get a drink," Lilley says and jogs down the steps from the kitchen towards the little bar.

Brad isn't at all disappointed Lilley knows his place. His fingers clench around the lighter in his pocket, briefly.

"Gee, Brad, anything else of mine you want to hold — SUNSHINE!" Ray abruptly bursts out, and Brad turns his head and watches as Walt waves, looking happy and golden as the nickname Ray bestowed on him.

Ray jumps down from the counter, brushes past Brad, and takes both steps at once before flinging himself at Walt in a half-hug, half-headlock.

Lilley keeps his distance.

Brad's pretty happy to see Walt, and feels the corners of his lips quirk up in a smile as he watches.

"Get off me, you crazy fucking hick!" Walt exclaims as he and Ray whoops something incoherent about Walt loving him, and they end up on the floor in a tangle of limbs.

He glances at the rest of the room and sees a smile on the face of anyone who's paying any attention to the little reunion of Brad's students. Except there's someone Brad's not seen before, young kid, looks younger than Ray. He’d maybe come in with Walt, because he’s standing watching Ray and Walt tussle with a curious look on his face.

"Hey, Pappy," Brad asks, "he one of yours?"

"Yep, sure was," Pappy says. "Trombley. Kid's the best shot I've ever worked with," Pappy shifts and frowns, then shakes his head. "'Cept Rudy, obviously."

"Obviously," Brad says. "What aren't you telling me, Pap?"

"Nothin'," Pappy says. "Kid's just real... intense."

Rudy frowns, which is curious. Rudy doesn't frown about anyone. He's about to ask Rudy what his assessment of Trombley is when Nate comes back up the steps.

"Brad, I need to borrow you for a minute. Bring Ray."

“Hallelujah, sir,” Brad says, and nods assent. Now they can sort out exactly what this “party” is about, apart from playing with Brad’s blood pressure.

* * *

The study reflects Nate better than anything else Brad’s seen in the house.

It’s nothing obvious. There’s only little hints Brad takes in, like the bare walls with their little picture hooks empty, because Nate’s clearly drawn the line on the bad art at the doorway. There’s the desk that isn’t quite messy, but isn’t quite the hotel room neat the rest of the apartment is. There’s dust behind his computer monitor, the cleaner doesn’t come in here. There’s five pens laid out across the desk’s surface visible behind Nate where he’s leaning against the edge.

Nate isn’t the kind to sit behind his desk to talk to them — no alpha dog moves needed, Nate commands respect without the noise and fire some men seem to need. Brad prefers the quiet reassured manner to posturing and games — only Nate isn’t so quietly reassured right now, and that’s the first thing that gets the hair on the back of Brad’s neck up.

Nate’s leaning comfortably, but his arms are crossed.

Brad’s situates himself in front of Nate. Ray throws himself into the chair at Brad’s right, pushing up someone’s ugly fucking Elvis sunglasses on his head.

Probably Lilley’s, Brad observes, indifferently.

Deliberately indifferently.

Walt grins and finger-waves hello. The new kid, Trombley, is leaning against the wall to one side. He’s is picking his teeth with a sharp-looking flick-knife. Brad is having trouble pinning a character assessment down beyond 'a little unbalanced'. Their interaction has been limited, however: they’d exchanged a nod as Nate had informed him he is being asked to help Trombley to acquire more field experience.

The kid is too quiet. In most people Brad would say that could just be a reaction to being in a room of his betters, but he looks relaxed. Brad watches him inspect his fingernail before flicking the knife shut, and thinks of how a cat will only groom itself if it feels at ease.

“Now Godfather is extremely busy, so he’s given me the privilege of asking for your assistance in this. This, gentlemen, is big,” Nate hesitates.

It’s not a deliberate pause, Brad doesn’t think. He’s thinking.

“Hey Nate, you got wireless in this building?” Ray asks, rocking on the chair he’s leaning back so it sits on two legs glancing idly at the flashing lights of Nate’s modem.

“Shut up, Ray,” Brad says.

Ray gives him the finger and a smile. Brad gives him _nothing_ and turns his eyes back to Nate. He’s not particularly pleased with Ray.

“Godfather needs you to retrieve some goods for him.”

“What the fuck?” Ray asks, dropping his chair back down to all four legs.

Which is an excellent question.

“Sir?” Brad says.

“Godfather needs you to take a shipment of cigarettes from a warehouse where they’re being kept on pier nineteen. Godfather,” Nate pauses and corrects himself, meeting Brad’s eyes for a beat longer than anyone else’s, “ _I’m_ not asking you all to just be truck drivers and delivery boys here. I assume you are all aware that most of the docks are owned by The General.”

Godfather wants them to _steal_ cigarettes from _The General_.

“Sir,” Brad starts, but is almost glad when Nate holds up his hand. He’s not entirely sure where to start unfucking the laundry list of shit that he wants to say is wrong with this.

First, first is probably that they’re _assassins_ , not fucking smash-and-grabbers you can pick up on any street corner and pay in crack.

Second, second is The General. His business runs parallel to Godfather’s, his business is as big. This isn’t taking cigarettes from a twelve-year-old, this is a slap in the face.

“Who's the General?" Trombley asks calmly, confusion evident on his face.

Ray barks out a loud laugh and Brad watches Walt cover his mouth with a hand. Brad can’t help a little smile lighting upon his lips too, at the sheer scale of ignorance.

"The General is Ben Patton, Trombley,” Nate says, the only one of them not laughing. “He owns the docks and a business almost equal to Godfather’s, along with having a serious hand the gun trade. He’s been wanted for twenty years.” A little of the cop in Nate shows, every now and then.

“Oh,” Trombley says, “cool.”

Ray catches Brad’s eye and rolls his eyes hugely. Brad agrees silently.

"Have a guess why he's called the General, Trombley," Ray says, sarcasm thicker than melted cheese. He just can’t keep his mouth shut. Ray pulls his ugly borrowed sunglasses down and looks at Trombley over them.

It's ten o'clock at night and Ray is wearing sunglasses. _Sun_ being a fairly important part of that word. These particular glasses appear to be some mutant love child of seventies Elvis and Rudy's gay ass J-Lo glasses.

Brad takes a moment to dismiss his more paranoid thoughts about Ray not wanting Brad to get a good look at the state of his pupils. As if Brad hasn't had enough practice reading Ray to know what and how much from the lines of perspiration that turns his hair shiny where it's buzzed short at the nape of his neck, or the timbre of his babble, or the twitches of his trigger fingers, or the tap of his toes.

“While Trombley’s ignorance is amusing, Ray, let’s get back to the point. Nate? Not to be too blunt, sir, but this makes about as much sense as a Bangkok massage without a happy ending,” Brad says. “If Godfather wanted The General dead, I can see him asking us.”

Ray says _fuck yeah_.

“But this seems, at best, a waste of my time and skillset and at worst,” Brad stops before he finishes. He’s unsure how Nate would take what he’d wanted to say first off: at worst, like Godfather was losing it. “We’re hard-ass killers, Nate, not thieves,” he finishes.

“Thanks, Bones,” Rays says. Brad has less than a clue what he’s talking about and stares at him until he explains. “Star Trek, Brad? You have lived a sad, pop-culturally void life my friend. Not that I don’t agree. This is some bullshit.”

"There are a number of reasons that Godfather wants you for the job. This isn’t an ordinary smash and grab, this is a warehouse that’s guarded by solid guys. This will really hit the General where it hurts, cigarettes are his easy business, they're his spending money. Without them, things are tight for him," Nate says. “And Godfather wants the goods, but Godfather also very much wants things to be tight for Patton right now.”

Brad could write a novel with what he’s not being told, but sometimes in this business you don’t know what the higher-ups believe you don’t need to know.

“Some craving Godfather’s got,” Ray says.

“Someone should tell him you can actually buy a pack at like any seven-eleven any time you want,” Walt says, grinning at Ray.

“Man, a fucking warehouse? Let’s say there’s even just one pissy truckload, which it had better not be, that’s like twenty smokes a pack, ten packs a carton, like a shitload of cartons fit in a truck, it’s like forty or fifty thousand, so say it’s somewhere in the middle of that that’s like eleven fucking million smokes. Godfather’s got him a serious fucking craving.” Ray does the math without pausing to draw breath, and Brad momentarily can’t help shooting him a smile.

Ray smiles back. Brad’s never gotten over how pleased he is every time Ray proves himself smarter than anyone in the room.

“Jesus, I can’t wait for when I don’t have to just bum a smoke anymore. I will be one happy motherfucker when the day comes I feel like a cigarette and instead of walking to the corner store I hire three badass assassins… and Trombley… to pick up my nicotine fix.”

“Thank you, Ray,” Nate says dryly. “Now gentlemen, you are my first choice team for this. You don’t have to say yes now, but I need answers by tomorrow evening at the latest. The job goes down within the next week and it will require prep,” Nate says, and stands and waits patiently.

Trombley agrees quickly.

“I’m in,” he says and the first smile Brad’s seen on his face quirks the corner of his lips. “I want my shot at killing someone up closer than a thousand meters.”

Ray raises his eyebrows above the rims of his glasses, and Brad doesn’t engage.

“I’m in,” Walt says. “I need the work.”

Brad frowns. He wasn’t aware Walt had any money issues — though when he thinks about it, Walt hadn’t worked any job Brad can think of for a long time.

Brad stands up from his chair. Ray looks up at him from behind his glasses and shrugs.

“We’re in.”

“Thank you,” Nate says, “Brad, I will speak to you tomorrow with details. Get back out there and have fun.”

They file out of the room and Brad watches Ray duck immediately towards the hallway that leads to the bathroom, again. He’s tempted to follow — Ray can handle himself, but he’s ingested enough for one night. It isn’t Brad’s problem.

More accurately, it shouldn’t be Brad’s problem.

“Brad,” Nate says and Brad pauses and turns around in the doorway. “I’m… glad you’re here. We all know you could be sitting on a beach somewhere drinking a cold beer."

Brad reminds himself, through the brief flush of paranoia that rushes through him, that Nate doesn’t know of Brad’s little stretch of beach. But why Nate is bringing this up now, Brad isn’t sure.

He’s made enough to retire on comfortably, he’s trained more people than most, he doesn’t need to be here — and Nate knows it. Except Brad does need his job. He lives his job in a way some other’s don’t. Some are in it for the payday. Brad is in it because it’s in Brad. It feels a little like Nate has something else he wants to say.

“Nate. This is bullshit,” Brad tries, giving Nate an opening for anything he’s not letting go.

Nate says nothing for a beat and Brad searches him for any clue, any sign he knows more than he’s telling. There’s nothing beyond his hesitation, he’s still poker-faced and calm.

“I’m just glad to have you on board, Brad. I need men I can trust,” Nate says. “Thank you.”

“I’m in the bag sir,” Brad says. “No need to flatter me.” He’s half-joking, but he’s also faintly uncomfortable with Nate’s sincerity and playing it off as a joke is the most efficient way he knows to avoid chick flick moments.

Nate smiles, nods.

It’s true, though, that Brad may not have agreed so easily for someone else. Godfather himself he might have had to think about it from, but he respects Nate’s intelligence and trusts him not to throw Brad to the wolves (if only out of self-preservation, Nate isn’t stupid enough not to be at least wary of him).

Brad feels a healthy amount of doubt, but he can appease doubt with preparation. A lot of preparation. Like eyes on the warehouse starting tomorrow.

Ray’s coming too, despite the immanent hangover, and the thought of dragging him awake at o’dark hundred appeals to the sadist in Brad.

Whatever this is, it’s dangerous, and Brad is… curious.

* * *

There’s a headache inducing beat ruminating from somewhere within Nate’s truly impressive sound system. Brad’s torn between general appreciation for the serious sound quality, and irritation that the actual stereo is apparently hidden so as to make yet more room for the blank spaces and ugly art.

It’s also irritating that it’s hidden since that means he can’t destroy it so that he never again has to hear the nauseating white boy rap that’s spewing out of the thing. Clearly Q-Tip and Christeson have taken over DJ duties. At least it’s not country.

He also can’t go over and pry Ray off of Lilley, despite that display being in plain view since Ray had come bouncing out of the bathroom a few minutes ago.

He’s disturbed to find he doesn’t notice Poke until he’s practically standing next to him.

“Hey, Iceman. You okay? You look about ready to cut a bitch. What the fuck’d Fick want, some kamikaze bullshit? I know you like that pretty motherfucker, but you don’t own him no favours,” Poke says bluntly. Poke’s wordy sometimes, but he’s wise, too.

Brad looks away from Ray.

Lilley’s hand is on his chest, pushing him gently away and holding up his camera-phone with his other hand as Ray makes some obscene commentary, Brad can faintly make out the words _come-stained crack-whore_ , and he sticks out his tongue, leaning too close to the lens. Lilley shoves him a few more times, laughing, and Brad’s fingers clench lightly on the beer every time.

Poke follows his eyes, then looks back at him half-smiling.

“Music’s too loud,” Brad says.

“Amen to that, I can’t stand this shit,” Poke says, and doesn’t look back towards Ray. He might have noticed Brad’s gaze, he might not have. Poke’s known him long enough to keep his mouth shut.

He punches Brad lightly in the arm and Brad sees he’s holding out a beer to him, condensation running down the neck of it.

“Looked like you needed one.”

“Thank you,” Brad says. Poke settles beside him against the wall. He wouldn’t vent to just anyone, but he’s known Poke longer than he’s known almost anyone in the business. “Nate wants us to do a smash-and-grab.”

“The fuck doesn’t he just rope in some cheap-ass expendables?” Poke says, outraged. Brad still feels faintly the same way.

“It’s a cigarette shipment. Big,” Brad says, Poke looks at him with a quirked eyebrow. “General Patton’s,” Brad says. Unease and anticipation kick up a fuss anew as he talks about it.

Poke whistles quietly, and takes a sip of his drink. Brad does the same and lets him digest that.

“I know you’re fond of Nate, man, but don’t let it slip your mind he used to be one of the bad guys,” Poke says.

As if Brad could, but he sees Poke’s point.

“Thought we were the bad guys,” Brad says.

Poke smirks and they click their beers together. Brad manages a genuine smile back.

“That explains why you were lookin’ like you wanted to cut a bitch,” Poke says. “That’s some weird shit right there. Glad Fick asked you first, man. Can’t say I’d have been interested in taking him up on that.”

Brad nods. Fair enough.

Across the room, Ray’s loud enough Brad can hear everything he’s saying. Lilley’s laughing, along with Q-Tip and Christeson.

“… And Trombley’s a fuckin’ _Harold_? Jesus, homes, I can see why the fuck no one calls him that, motherfucker is creepy enough without the weird ass nineteenth century man-child name. That kid is stone cold psycho, mark my damn words.”

Ray may or may not be aware that at the volume he’s speaking, at this point it could be deliberate, as Trombley, who isn’t very far away across the room, can certainly hear him. He glances in Ray’s direction, frowns faintly.

Brad is inclined to agree with Ray’s rapid-fire ranting this time. There are all types in their business, until you really peel back all the extraneous details like Rudy’s karmic journey, Ray’s high octane bullshit and ridiculous tattoos, Walt’s innocent smile, eventually you get down to it: you either kill people because you’re a little unbalanced or you kill people because you’re a lot unbalanced.

Brad’s comfortable not thinking about where on the scale he sits, so he doesn’t. He’d place Ray somewhere in the middle, if only because he swings pendulously between the two sides often and easily.

Trombley, with his dead eyed smile and inoffensive personality, Brad thinks would make a fine marker for the end of the scale marked _psychopath_.

This doesn’t particularly bother Brad, though clearly Ray has already taken a dislike to the kid. It’ll be interesting to work with him.

Ray still letting Lilley place hands all over him and giving back as good as he gets. Brad tells himself, this is just Ray, high. It’s not just Lilley, Brad has observed that a high Ray is a Ray who’s uncomfortably hands-on with women, men and potted plants.

Lilley’s a problem, though, because Ray’s got a loud mouth and Lilley’s got a video camera with a length of memory and a set of potential consequences Brad isn’t sure Lilley fully comprehends.

Ray could get himself in trouble because of Lilley’s persistent stupidity. He could get Brad in trouble.

At some point, Poke’s left him as a lost cause for conversation and Brad can’t say he cares too much.

Ray’s got a hand around Lilley’s wrist, the arm holding the little camera phone, and he’s tugging it over his shoulder and tilting his head upwards (leaning up on his toes a little) and kissing Lilley on the mouth. Lilley has the balls to turn his camera in his hand around so it faces them over Ray’s shoulder.

Ray says something close to Lilley’s mouth.

Brad is moving before he’s really made the decision to, which is a sensation usually reserved for combat. It’s not unsettling now, but he has the faintest feeling that it may be later.

His fingers curl around Ray’s bare arm, harder than he probably needs to. Ray doesn’t flinch so much as nearly twist his own arm out of the socket he spins around so fast.

“Jesus fuck, Brad,” Ray says, and jerks his arm a little.

Brad’s fingers tighten on instinct and Ray stops moving, then smiles.

Brad looks away from his face, but the second he’s looking at his fingers digging into the skin of Ray’s upper arm, distorting his radio wave tattoo with the shadowed dip his thumb’s fitted into he realises this is a mistake. He feels faintly sick, except that isn’t what he’s feeling at all.

He looks back at Ray’s face.

“Ray. I need to speak to you.”

Lilley backs off a step, puts his hands up at chest level, one palm open, his stupid fucking liability of a phone in the other. He doesn’t try and cover the gesture of surrender with a hand through his hair like earlier, and Brad feels a vicious sort of pleasure run sharply through him.

He makes sure he meets Lilley’s eyes until Lilley looks away.

 

“I’ll be back riiiight back,” Ray says, over his shoulder to Lilley. Brad breathes sharply through his nose and adjusts his grip on Ray’s arm.

Brad twists them around and Ray lets him put Ray’s back to the wall, but starts talking before Brad can even draw breath around the stone that’s taken up residence in his chest.

“Ray, you might want to watch the fucking camera.”

“What, you worried I’m going to turn up as the next internet porn star, Brad? The next Paris Hilton? I like to think I’m could pull off coked-out whore better than she ever did. Maybe I could make some serious cash, you don’t want to stifle my flourishing creativity —"

“No, Ray,” Brad is angry, fuming, feels like he’s all creaking control and teeth, jaw aching. His hand around Ray’s arm is simultaneously calming and making him feel out of control on an entirely different level he can’t think about right now. His fingers tighten and neither of them acknowledge that it must ache. “I’m worried you’re going to get fucking arrested because you’re out of your fucking dumb hick head on whatever Meesh ripped you off for and running your mouth in front of Lilley’s goddamn camera.”

“Really, Brad? You sure it’s not the Paris Hilton thing?”

“I don’t give a shit if you suck Lilley’s cock in front of everyone here and his retarded fucking liability of a toy.”

“Sorry it’s not _your_ dick I’m sucking?”

Brad momentarily loses the ability to speak.

Ray snorts, rubs his eyes hard and fast with the back of his free hand, the arm Brad’s not holding. When he stops and looks at Brad, his foot is jiggling against the toes of Brad’s shoe, but otherwise he’s mostly still. He doesn’t tug his arm away.

“What do you want, Brad?” he asks.

Brad shifts his fingers on Ray’s arm, looks away from Ray’s pitch-dark eyes, sweat shining on his upper lip. He looks at the faint red marks striped across Ray’s arm, where his fingers were, and forces his thumb still in an aborted slide across one of the red smudges that disappears under the black ink of Ray’s tattoo.

“I want you to be careful,” Brad says.

“Let me go, Brad,” Ray says, shaking his head. He tugs his arm and Brad lets it slip out of his grip.

“Ray.”

"Brad,” Ray says, then takes a breath and makes sure he’s heard, makes sure he’s heard by not just Brad, but the entire room, which Brad belatedly thinks about and feels his face flush hot. “Can I just mention that YOU DON'T FUCKING OWN ME!"

And the vague hush that runs over the room like a breaking wave, leaving only the bassline from the stereo like a heart beating too fast. It draws back and the volume of conversation gradually returns to normal.

Ray flashes him a grin that doesn’t touch his eyes.

Brad feels dead calm. He spins on his heel without speaking to Ray, head up and returning a nod to Pappy, waving as Poke raises a drink to him, as he makes his way towards the front door.

Walt calls something after him just before he ducks out the front door into the hall, but he doesn’t turn back. He’ll have to call Walt tomorrow morning anyway, so they can get directly onto this warehouse mission for Nate.

He doesn’t have a contact for Trombley, but Walt may, or he can go via Pappy or Nate for it.

He’s better off at home, starting an inventory of what they’ll need to do this job, and how exactly they’re going to run it. If Ray insists on continuing to rohypnol and possibly incriminate himself for a cheap fuck with a kid who shouldn’t be breathing the same air as him, that’s fine. It’s none of Brad’s business.

* * *

By two in the morning, Brad’s methodically worked through cleaning and polishing every weapon he owns. He’s also got the outline of a plan, pending Nate’s input, and sets his alarm for seven the next morning.

He strips for bed, and lies under the sheets, not thinking of his fingers around Ray’s arm.

He watches the ceiling, the faint line of orange light from the streetlight outside his window, sliding between his blackout curtains where they’re not quite flush. Light slips in like a card between a doorjamb and a lock. He’s half-hard from _not_ thinking about his fingers on Ray’s skin, and he turns over so his dick isn’t pressed against the mattress.

He fails to keep his mind away from Ray, though.

There are safer things to think about than his fingers on Ray's skin, and since he cannot actively force himself not to think of Ray, he substitutes recent memory for one of the first times he'd taken Ray out into the field.

Standing in daylight, bright sun reflecting off the light grey concrete of the rooftop doubling the glare so Brad squinted. Ray was wearing sunglasses, big and ugly, and, Brad was fairly sure, intended to be women's wear, and when he took them off to put his eyes to the scope of the M40. Both his eyes are bloodshot, one bruised.

Skinny little tweaker with a black eye and an attitude, a smile on his face and a cigarette in his mouth, looking like the minimal kickback from the M40 would knock him over.

Brad is lecturing: “The rifle is the first weapon you learn how to use, because it lets you keep your distance from the client. The closer you get to being a pro, the closer you can get to the client. The knife, for example, is the last thing you learn."

In hindsight, Ray had been uncharacteristically quiet. Brad hadn’t known what he would be in for when Ray regained his voice with the slow balancing of his brain chemistry. This was Ray coming down hard.

Ray had looked at him with his wide brown eyes and asked him if he had a family.

He'd told him he did. Brad normally would have ignored the question, but he answered Ray. Brad speaks to his family, still, there are just years between one meeting and the next. He tells them he works security for a private firm in Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever he'd been needed were that the truth.

Ray tells him he can't go home. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this," he'd said, rolling over onto his back, his head resting against the low ledge of the building's edge like a painful pillow, and looked up at Brad with a smile that didn't reach his bruised eyes. The butt of the rifle cast a short shadow over his bare arm. Brad'd looked at him for a long moment, unable to think of something appropriate to say.

And he’d told Ray where he lived.

Looking back, Brad thinks that should have been the first sign he might keep Ray. He thinks how he'd already had trouble lying down next to Ray on the hot concrete, pressed together shoulder-to-knees, putting his hands over Ray's and adjusting his grip on the M40 and feeling nothing at all.

If he hadn’t still been raw from the fucking-over Sarah had given him, maybe he would have seen that, that first sign he should have run a mile, leaving Ray with Pappy or Poke.

But he’d still been walking wounded when he met Ray.

Sarah.

("Brad you go away for weeks at a time, come back and beat the shit out of my friends. I can't handle it anymore.")

It was a little while before he realised she'd already been sleeping with Michael — Brad's _friend_. First guy Brad had fucked. Sarah and Michael are happy (married, Brad’s checked), swapping stories about his jealousy, how he was such a mistake.

He’s not fucking half-hard anymore.

* * *

Nate calls him at nine, almost on the dot. Brad’s sweating out a set of sit-ups on his bedroom floor. He’s lain beside the bed because there’s not enough room anywhere else but his cold-floored kitchen otherwise.

He scrambles off the floor and grabs his phone from the bench.

"Nate," Brad says, unhooking the phone from its charger.

"Good morning," Nate says.

"When are we doing this?" Brad asks. He's been ready to move since his alarm woke him at seven.

"You've got three days before anything's moved. I've texted you the address."

"What's the security like?"

"Godfather's word is it's solid guys, but very minimal."

Brad doesn't like the tone in Nate's choice of words. Minimal means at least four or five guys, all of whom may be armed, none of whom will be complete retards off the street dealing with this amount of goods. That’s agreeing with Godfather’s assessment, that isn’t, apparently, _Nate’s_.

"Nate, what's your word on the security?"

"My word is there's no harm in getting eyes on the place first."

"Noted, sir."

"You say that as if you hadn't already decided to, Brad."

"I appreciate your input," Brad says. He had already decided, yes, but you can never have too much intel.

"Godfather wants the trucks. There's three of them and they'll be full. You'll have Walt, Trombley, and obviously Ray, so there's a driver for each and one spare. I’ll text you the address you can park them at momentarily. Anything else you need from me?"

"A car and a contact for Trombley," Brad says.

"Car's out front," Nate says. Obviously Nate’s been on the go since as early as Brad has. Brad appreciates this about Nate, that he gets his men what they need.

Brad pads barefoot to the window pushes the heavy curtain aside to look down. There's a dark blue SUV parked directly in front of his building, nudged up behind his bike in his space. Brad _hmmm_ s into the phone. It's a soccer mom car, middle-class and non-descript.

"I've been informed Trombley is staying with Walt.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll get it organized.” Brad’s has to bring the phone back to his ear as he hears Nate say his name.

"I just want to let you know that, dependant on the outcome of this particular operation, this almost certainly won't be the last time Godfather employs this strategy against Patton."

"You're saying there's more bullshit smash-and-grab jobs I'm woefully overqualified for heading my way?"

"Very possibly," Nate breathes into the phone, almost a sigh. "Are you aware of Patton's main business, Brad?"

"I was under the impression it was guns." Brad’s M40A3 was somewhat deviously acquired from Patton’s people, in fact. One of his best guns.

"That's exactly it."

"Obviously I can't commit to anything further right now, Nate."

"Of course," Nate says quickly, "I'm just thinking out loud, Brad. Bad habit. I haven't got as many people I trust to bounce ideas off, anymore."

Bad habit from being a cop, Brad thinks. Wonders briefly how many others Nate still has from that. It has to be frustrating for someone as smart as Nate to be surrounded by the general ignorance of the assholes in Godfather's higher echelons.

Trust, though. Trust is a big word, and this isn't the first time Nate's said it to him. Brad appreciates Nate's regard, but he can't entirely turn off the part of him that's worried by the word. It's up there with some other words Brad feels he could live his life without speaking entirely.

"It's fine, sir. My ear is always open to you."

"Thank you, Brad," Nate says, and hangs up.

Brad paces the room once, feeling tense. He's left his M9 taped behind his mattress and goes to retrieve it, tugging it loose from the tape and settling it into the open top of his duffle.

He has to call Ray.

The anticipation of the awkwardness that will undoubtedly be almost entirely on Brad's own end is unpleasant. Not that there will be awkward silence, he is fairly certain he hasn't fucked up that badly (no worse than he has before). Ray's proven himself tolerant of almost all Brad's quirks and silences, and will generally, outside of a heated moment, let Brad alone with the things he clearly does not want to talk about, all the while filling in spaces with thousands of words and managing to give away as little as Brad does.

It’s fine. It’s how they work.

Brad contemplates picking up Walt first, but it's twenty minutes out of the way and so obvious he can't.

He grabs his duffle full of gear and calls Ray.

They’ve got to get eyes on the place by midday.

* * *

Brad stops at the McDonalds down the block from his building, on his way to collect Ray. He buys hotcakes and asks for two packets of syrup. Briefly despairs at the fact he actually knows Ray’s syrup preferences.

Brad pulls up to the curb in front of Ray’s building.

Ray’s leaning in the shade against the F of a six foot high obscenity in baby blue spray paint. Someone’s scrawled _da police_ next to it less competently, in black marker. If they’ve got that much time on their hands they’ve got enough time to think of something original, Brad thinks. Not that he can’t appreciate the sentiment.

Ray climbs into the passenger side of the SUV and slams the door shut. He’s wearing an overly large t-shirt, high-necked and with sleeves nearly to his elbows. He hadn’t rolled them up like Brad’s seen him do almost every time Ray’s even worn a t-shirt, he’s not comfortable in anything more covering than a wifebeater unless it’s below freezing.

Brad is fairly sure Ray doesn’t actually own a shirt with sleeves, and concludes uncomfortably that it’s someone’s (Lilley’s) shirt and that Ray’s hiding something. Brad is torn between relief that at least Ray’s covered up and… frustration that there is apparently something to hide.

Ray greets him mercifully with a mouth full of words, none of which being “about last night”.

Brad’s shoulders relax.

“Do not tell me you had Micky D’s without me, Brad,” Ray says, nostrils flaring. “I swear to your Hebrew god unless I’m still tripping some fucking serious balls I can smell breakfast.”

Brad leans back and grabs the paper bag off the back seat and throws it in Ray’s lap without a word.

Ray grins and opens it.

“Hotcakes, praise Jesus!”

“'Brad' will suffice,” Brad says. He can’t help smiling, as they pull away from the curb. Walt and Trombley are waiting.

“Fuck, I feel like I haven’t eaten for a week,” Ray says, through a wetly audible mouthful. Brad glances over, right as a drop of syrup falls from Ray’s chin. He refrains from mentioning this is the only thing he’s actually seen Ray eat for the last week, other than a piece of toast.

They pull up in front of Walt’s apartment and Brad looks over at Ray, who’s tapping the last few drops of syrup out of the container held over his open mouth, and getting more on his shirt than his tongue.

“What?” Ray says, glancing at him sidelong with his tongue still stuck out for the last drop, before throwing the empty packet into the bag, before licking his lips lewd and ineffective. “Not gonna tell me I’m a dumb hick who needs to learn how to eat?” Ray raises his eyebrows.

He picks up another hotcake and tears half off.

Brad shakes his head and sees Walt and Trombley making their way towards the car.

“No. I’m going to let Walt do that.”

Walt climbs in behind Ray, and Trombley jumps in the other side.

Ray turns around in his seat.

“Walt!”

“Jesus, Ray, you fucking hick, you just spat food on me! You look like you should be riding the short bus, not shot-gun.”

Ray turns around and catches Brad’s eye, they exchange a smile, Ray’s rueful and sticky, Brad knows he’s smirking just a little smugly. He has taught Walt well.

“You’re turning Walt against me, you bastard. WALT, baby, Sunshine, tell me you still love me most —"

Brad glances in the mirror. Walt’s got his fists up, violently warding off Ray’s dirty, grasping fingers (there’s no point in bitch-slapping Ray away, Walt has already learned that Ray is persistent and takes most hits like they’re lovetaps unless they involve knuckles and intent). Trombley’s looking confused and faintly disgusted, hunched in the opposite corner. He’ll learn.

* * *

They drive ten minutes outside the city, into the terrible sameness of suburbia, right up to where the same three identikit brick houses stop repeating, manicured lawns turn scraggle-edged, and the older cottages that are waiting to be torn down border the river and its docks.

They leave the SUV parked in one of the last streets that’s still leafy-green and lived-in, and walk on the next block to where there's as many empty lots as houses, broken down like a hillbilly smile.

At the border of the last stretch of trash strewn grass that separates the edge of suburbia from the docks, there's one last house. Its front windows are boarded up like two black eyes and caution tape streams off the three pickets left of its formerly white fence.

Brad had cruised these streets on his bike in the cold just post-dawn and been almost suspicious of the perfection of the broken down old house as a hide for watching the docks and their warehouse. If there's a window on the side of the house that the docks are on, Brad will almost be tempted to check the place for bugs.

No one's that paranoid though, the docks are still nearly eight hundred yards away by his estimate (which is always fairly accurate).

"Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker," Ray says and kicks the front door with the flat of his boot.

Brad is gratified to see the door's lock was already broken, which he could have told Ray had Ray been able to wait thirty seconds before charging in making unnecessary noise and fuss. The door slams against the wall and bounces back, and nothing but Ray's quick reflexes save him from a bloody nose.

"Check it out, I've got fuckin' Incredible Hulk strength," Ray says, smiling lopsided over his shoulder and holding the door with one hand.

"You've got incredible retard strength," Brad says, and looks away when Ray gives him a pout, so he doesn’t let the grin that’s quivering on the corners of his lips slip free.

Walt laughs and Trombley grins, tentatively.

Inside it's dark and stinks like human filth.

"Smells like piss and fortified wine in here," Ray says. "Is that a tautology?" he turns and asks Trombley who looks, rightly, confused.

Ray rolls his eyes at him.

"You should be right at home, then," Brad says. "Trombley, go check if there's a window in that room."

He points to what might have once been a lounge room, but is now a space empty but for a few broken chairs and damp looking couch cushions, covered in unwholesome stains. No harm is separating Ray and Trombley pre-emptively. Not that Ray is being seriously antagonistic, because there would have been more than a confused expression from Trombley.

Ray picking a real fight is as subtle as spit in the eye.

Harmony in the team is important, however, and Brad is a believer in prevention being better than cure. He's unsure about what a pissed-off Trombley might look like, which is unsettling.

"Might as well put your bags down, gents. We're going to be here a few hours yet. Don't kick off your shoes though; Godfather does not cover tetanus shots."

"Hey!" Trombley yells from the other room. "There's a window in here that faces the docks."

Perfect.

"Oooh," Ray says, and Brad stops on his way into the next room. He turns around and watches Ray prod at a nest of blankets with his foot, then bend down and retrieve something. "Chef Boyardee! Someone left us a welcome gift. Awesome."

"You're not gonna actually eat that are you, Ray?" Walt asks, looking disgusted and amused.

"Of course I am, Walt. What kind of sick individual would leave perfectly good Chef Boyardee," he squints at the torn label, "... 123s and... balls on the floor?"

"Ray, an actual drunken vagrant has apparently rejected that very can," Brad says. “Does that not seem like a sign to you?”

"Their loss," Ray says, and fishes Brad's knife out of his duffle without asking.

Brad knows from long experience there is almost nothing Ray won't eat when he decides he's actually eating regular meals, and he cannot abide by wasted food. This, at least, is in a can. Dubious origins disregarded, it doesn't even appear to be rusty, and it isn’t the worst thing Brad’s seen Ray eat.

Brad shrugs when Walt raises his eyebrows at him. Ray can answer that himself. He hefts his duffle of weapons into the dirty lounge room and sees the window Trombley had yelled about.

It’s boarded up with ply, lazily tacked up on an angle. There’s a fist sized hole in it that was likely made by an actual fist, probably of the previous occupants who’d left their bedding, their Chef Boyardee, and the smell of urine.

Brad leans close to the hole in the plywood and looks out. There’s a six and a half foot chainlink fence that runs around the docks a few meters from the window, but it’s got holes cut into it that Brad would barely have to duck to walk through. Beyond it there’s an open field for a good eight hundred meters, covered in long, half-dead grass and trash, industrial squalor, and then the warehouses. Their target, dead ahead.

The hole in the plywood will accommodate a scope nicely, and that eight hundred meters will disappear under the glass.

Brad straightens up again. The setback is it’s at an uncomfortable height for him to lean into.

"Where'd you get _that_?" Trombley asks.

"Magic," Ray says and shakes his hands, which sends red sauce spattering onto the floor and his shoes. He tips the can up and slurps the last mouthful of spaghetti letters and numbers and sputters a cough. “Ugh, imagine if I died choking on Chef Boyardee, like Paris Hilton on a mouthful of jizz.” He makes gurgling noise and flaps his hands at his throat before stopping abruptly. “Scratch that, there's no way she's not used to swallowing buckets of that shit.”

Brad does not pause to wonder what it means that he’s not disgusted by Ray’s red sauce covered face. Instead he refocuses away from Ray, unzips the side flap of the duffle and inspects his disassembled M40A3.

The rifle lies placid and bloodless inside the dark green canvas, and Brad runs a finger over the trigger guard. It’s one of the most reliable guns he has ever owned, and he imagines this is something like what pet owners feel, except he never has to clean up the mess this little animal makes.

He pulls the unattached scope out, tosses it to Ray.

"Shut up, Ray."

Ray picks at the edge of the hole in the plywood before he leans the scope out and watches.

* * *

By late afternoon they’ve seen seven smoke breaks from the men in the warehouse, and nothing else. Ray’s started singing.

Waiting is no small part of this job. You learn to wait and watch on the job. You learn to wait for the next job to come along. You might wait weeks, even months for an offer worth taking.

Brad has always been fairly at home within his own head, and when there was downtime he always found something to do: surf, swim, ride, train – there are no excuses not to train during downtime — drink good coffee when Ray brought it to him, watch Ray play darts in some dive bar.

Some men dealt badly with downtime: Rudy and Pappy disappeared abroad like they couldn’t be still for more than a few weeks, looking for what, Brad wasn’t sure. It could just be they kept working, or it could be an extension of Rudy’s quest for enlightenment.

Ray had long, chemically-fuelled weekends before turning up at Brad’s apartment on a Monday morning, coffee in hand, if Brad hadn’t followed him, as he did sometimes. Not because he enjoyed the dives Ray hung around in, but because sometimes the need to know was overwhelming. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Ray could look after himself. He just liked to be there, sometimes, and sitting quietly at a bar with Ray always in his peripheral vision was, despite what Ray said, not boring or weird.

It’d just be sad to take up Ray on his offer to play darts — Brad was always the better shot.

Other people dealt very badly with extensive downtime. There had been the occasional person who ended up doing a six month stretch for something petty: assault, DUI; meanwhile Brad and everyone knew they were sitting on enough homicides to keep them in for three hundred years. Brad had bailed Q-Tip and Christeson out once after they had systematically taken out every street light in a ten block radius without a weapon.

Brad had never gotten the full story.

Proper downtime is, though, Cinderella to the ugly step-sister that is surveillance.

Ray, unsurprisingly, breaks the first sustained silence.

“And in another shocking development over at warehouse nineteen, the fat motherfucker in the trucker cap is having _another smoke break_. What the fuck they’re doing in there that’s so strenuous I’d really like to know. On second thoughts, maybe I wouldn’t, because they are some ugly motherfuckers and all I can think now is _orgy_.” Ray says without looking away from the scope. “Orgy, orgy, orgy,” Ray repeats, pensively. Then he shakes his head like a wet dog.

“There will be no orgies, Ray.”

“Aw, not even one? I’d let you come on my face,” Ray’s still staring into the scope and shifting from where he’s been kneeling on one knee to the other, his shirt pulled up over the back of his jeans, a slice of skin visible between hem and waistband. Brad looks down at the chipped floorboards.

He takes a deep breath.

“They’re taking a lot of smoke breaks,” Walt says in the ensuing silence.

“Well, they are a bunch of unscrupulous criminals left alone to guard a large shipment of stolen cigarettes. I mean hell, it’s not like that shit’s gonna be perfectly inventoried down to the last stick,” Ray says. “This is a totally WWJD moment. Jesus would smoke up like a motherfucker.”

Twenty minutes later, Brad’s M9 has never been cleaner. He suspects it wasn’t this clean when it was new. He resists re-cleaning any other weapon he cleaned last night, resenting his inability to put things off. Surveillance tests even his patience, occasionally.

“Status update, Ray. Then hand the scope over to Trombley.”

Trombley’s maybe been on watch a little longer than anyone else, but Brad doesn’t think of this as unfairness. You have to earn your way out of being bottom dog, and Trombley is new. That is how things work in Brad’s team.

“This hot news just in: another one is having a fucking smoke break. Jesus. Chuck me my pack, Walt?” Ray says, standing up and stretching, hands behind his head like he’s under arrest. “What the fuck is IN this shipment? It can’t just be fucking cigarettes, there’s got to be some blood diamond, black ops shit going on here.”

“Ray, please no conspiracy theories,” Brad says.

“Come on Brad! You can’t tell me you’re not thinking it!” Ray still has Chef Boyardee on his face, it’s illuminated by the glow of his cigarette as he lights it. Brad makes a swipe at his own face and Ray wipes his cheek in response.

Speculation, at this point, is useless. They’ve committed, and unless they observe an army setting up shop in the warehouse before morning, the job’s got to be done. It isn’t that there isn’t money in cigarettes, it’s only boredom gives you too much time to think and, if you’re Ray, breeds bullshit on top.

“Ha, you are,” Ray accuses.

It has occurred to Brad, along with far too many useless ideas, that perhaps Godfather had employed them because there was something of value in the trucks beside the cigarettes and they were of a higher calibre than the regular smash-and-grab monkeys. It’s unlikely, though.

“Why does he want cigarettes anyway?” Trombley asks. “Not like you can’t buy cigarettes already, you know?”

Walt snorts. Ray gives Brad a stare, eyebrow curved like a question. Brad waves his hand for Ray to go ahead.

“Trombley, a truckload of cigarettes smuggled into our fine U S of A will garner a rough profit of two million sexy green dollars. That is enough to stuff the g-strings of every strippers in the city more than once, my friend. That is enough to pay for the removal of the sixth finger from the hands of all your undoubtedly freakish people —"

“Money, Trombley,” Brad interjects when he feels Ray’s made enough of a point for everyone. He smiles, but doesn’t laugh at Trombley despite the fact Ray’s lifted that last phrase directly from Brad’s insults to him and his hillbilly kin.

* * *

“Let's have a toast for the douchebags, let's have a toast for the assholes…” Ray hums quietly for a minute. “Every one of them that I knooow,”

“Ray, please. No more Kanye West.”

Walt and Trombley have both nodded off. It’s past four in the morning. Trombley had gone down first, curling himself into a relatively clean corner and falling asleep faster than Brad would have thought possible with a balled up sweatshirt and a cold wall for bedding. He’s snoring faintly. Walt had laid himself out across the floor with his head on his bag and hadn’t moved for the past twenty minutes.

"No country and no Kanye? You're breaking my balls, Brad. You're right though, there's only room for one ego that size in this shack."

"It's not ego if it's true, and your Cartman is abysmal."

"Okay, okay Brad, this one's just for you," Ray shuffles around on his knees and points at Brad and smiles fake and cheesy. "And feel free to sing along."

"YOU'RE AS COLD AS ICEEEEEE —"

Despite the fact Ray continues to murder melody as efficiently as he kills for cash, and the terrible pun that Ray has made before, the song choice is still an improvement.

Walt starts singing along with his eyes shut and Brad stands and stretches, takes care not to look at Ray reaching up towards him full of mock emotion and bad singing.

It's still Ray on his knees.

Brad takes up position at the scope and listens to Walt, who is evidently not quite as asleep as Trombley, "harmonising" with Ray.

There's light starting to show faintly yellow in the windows high up the sides of the warehouse. Their view is side on to their target, and the only entrances Brad can see are the long line of windows that run too high up to be practical, and the door that's dwarfed by the length and height of the blank side of the warehouse, covered by a small awning. Men have been coming out of it every now and then to smoke, pick their noses, and throw cigarette butts out into the dirty grassland, accompanied by the commentary of whoever's on the scope.

Colour commentary if it's Ray.

Brad moves the scope a little and looks over the other identical warehouse buildings that are spaced evenly along the river. The front doors of the next building along are visible, huge steel roller doors high enough to let a semi-trailer in with room to spare, and wide enough for two trucks side by side. Further along the road the runs beside them ends in locked gates, the chainlink fence still standing strong at that point.

The small side door makes sense, even with the unpredictability of their untimed smoke breaks. The men tend to come out singly or in pairs, there appear to be only five individuals, and Brad has seen nothing but a sidearm on two of. Not a problem.

After a few minutes, Brad realises there's a general silence, and when he glances around Ray’s looking over at Walt and grinning.

“Little tykes just couldn’t keep their eyes open.”

Walt’s got his head leaning on his pack and his mouth open just slightly, he looks relaxed now. He snorts faintly in his sleep. Trombley’s still curled into the corner and looks peacefully dead to the world.

Ray gets up and drags one of the stained couch cushions over to the window, and lets it falls with a puff of dust and dirt beside Brad, before he sits down elbows on his knees. The toes of one of his boots up nudges up against Brad’s leg. Brad doesn’t shift away. Ray kicks him lightly.

“Brad,” Ray says impatiently.

Brad turns to look at him properly, and he’s holding a granola bar out.

“Thanks,” Brad says. He hasn’t eaten since some time around midday, he realises.

Ray smiles, and kicks him in the calf again. It feels like an apology, and Brad smiles back.

Brad thinks momentarily about telling him to get an eye on the scope, but finds he doesn’t really want to. No point waking Walt or Trombley, either. Brad eats and he and Ray sit in comfortable silence. Brad’s knees start protesting and he has to shift, Ray pulls his foot away.

“You look tired,” Brad sits back and rests an arm over one knee. Watches Ray. Ray’s eyes are dark and smiling. His face is clean of red sauce but he’s managed to get some spattered in the middle of his shirt (of Lilley’s shirt). Brad hopes it stains, briefly, then wants to shoot himself with his fucking M9 for being a retard.

“Thanks, asshole. So do you. Evidently it’s harder to stay up all night when you’re sober. Who knew?”

“Nice shirt,” Brad says, and feels like a fool. He doesn’t want to talk about Lilley, or the previous night.

“Yeah? You should like it, it was yours,” Ray says, pulling the front of the shirt out to glance down at it. “Shit, I got sauce on it.”

“What?” Brad says.

“I got sauce on my shirt,” he says.

“ _My_ shirt?”

“Sorry, I got sauce on _your_ shirt,” Ray says with a smirk, not sounding at all sorry.

 _Brad’s_ shirt. Covering whatever Ray’s covering.

Brad must be silent a little too long, because Ray’s smile fades and he looks ominously like he’s about to say something serious.

“Brad —" Ray starts and Brad feels himself flush, and can’t let Ray finish, or start. No one’s on the scope.

“Get up on the scope, Ray.”

Ray rolls his eyes and Brad says nothing, thankful Ray’s actually stopped talking when Brad wants him to, for once.

“Hey, Brad,” Ray says a beat later, tone all business now, “get up here.” Ray waves him closer without taking his eye off whatever he’s seen. “I don’t remember seeing him before, do you?”

Brad takes the scope, and glances around for a second before he sees what Ray’s seen: there’s a man on the roof, standing on the edge of the building closes to them, but facing right and watching, Brad turns the scope to look in the direction he’s facing. There’s nothing particularly interesting happening, except for a ship docking.

“Good eyes, Ray. We’ll bring the M40 back tomorrow night, and get rid of our friend on the roof before we go in.”

At dawn, Brad feels they’ve seen all they need to. Godfather’s word was bare minimum security, and six men isn’t quite that, but it isn’t far enough off it for Brad to feel more than the same level of trepidation he’d felt for the entire job. He feels as close to satisfied as he thinks he’s going to get with this bullshit. He texts Nate: _good to go sir_

Ray wanders over to wake Walt and Trombley, Trombley gets water flicked in his face from his open canteen and Walt gets the dubious pleasure of Ray humping his face like a dog.

Nate replies ten minutes later: _Godfather says tomorrow night._

* * *

  
They’re back in their little condemned cottage, preparing to rid themselves of the first obstacle on the path to Godfather’s gains. It's eleven o’clock at night and around seventy degrees. It’s starting to rain in light spit warm drips. Brad feels it as he presses a hand through the hole in the plywood, hears it dripping down gentle through holes in the roof in the hallway and the kitchen.

It's dry in the dirty little lounge room though, and he pushes his duffle into the corner with one foot after he's set up his M40, attached the night vision to the scope. He holds her out, unloaded, and presses the butt of the gun to his shoulder for a moment, feeling how comfortable she still is before he tosses the gun to Ray. He slips a single bullet out of the small box in his pocket and presses it into Ray’s palm. He should only need one.

Brad ignores Trombley's stare, the kid looks like a hungry dog that's been tossed outside into this sticky summer storm while he watches someone else eat a nice juicy steak.

As much as Brad trusts Pappy's word on Trombley, and on most everything else, he's not letting Trombley take the shot at the man who's showed up again on the warehouse's rooftop. He hasn't seen Trombley perform with his own eyes, but he has seen Ray, and this is not a training exercise.

"That rifle’s got to be older than me," Walt comments. It is older than him, in fact.

"Yeah, looks like a real shitstick," Trombley says. "You really use that one? Rudy and Pappy have got a sweet M200, that shit can destroy a dude like two clicks away. Just, pow,” Trombley moves his arms out in a wide arc above his head that looks curiously like ballet, but Brad understands he’s talking about the bloody fallout from someone taking a fifty calibre round to the head.

"Do not insult Brad's M40, Trombley," Ray says, holding the gun against his chest like it's an infant to be protected from Trombley's hurtful words.

"Ray's right, man," Walt says, "I once saw Brad literally hammer in a nail with the butt of that thing." He reaches over and strokes a finger over a gouge in the rifle's butt. Brad had actually hammered nails with the beat up old girl, and the dent is only one of many dings and scratches, the paint job has become less visible than the dull grey metal underneath.

It’s not that Brad doesn’t get kind of hard for some of the serious guns Rudy and Pappy tote, some of the new mind-blowing tech that’s coming out now. It’s just he’s also got a strong appreciation for the tried and tested, and his M40 is an excellent gun.

The rain's slowing to a trickle already, the little cloud burst just enough to push the humidity higher and do nothing about the heat. The heat is better than the rain for Ray's line of sight, though. Especially given there is no room in the fist-sized hole in the plywood for a spotter to put binoculars, or any other scope. Especially not anything bigger and higher powered than the little scope attached to the gun.

It should be adequate, Ray is an excellent shot. Brad knows this. Everyone he's trained has become at least competent, regardless of innate talent, but Ray is genuinely good.

Of course, he could take the shot himself, but there are perks to being a leader and one of them is he is allowed to be selfish and watch Ray work, without owing an explanation to anyone.

He loads the rifle, before rolling his shoulders a few times and shifting his footing. Ray settles the rifle in the window, stooping a little so the butt can rest comfortably against his shoulder. Knees bent, braced and steady. Brad watches him look through the scope and readjust himself twice before he can no longer resist the urge to correct him.

"Ray," he says, stepping forward and placing his hand flat on Ray's back, over his ribs. Ray's skin is warm and Brad can feel the dampness of sweat through his shirt (Brad's shirt, _again_ ).

"Yeah, Brad. I'm breathing," Ray says, before Brad can open his mouth again. Ray takes a deep breath that Brad feels pushing out his ribs, a proper deep breath to regain his stillness. Brad pushes gently against Ray's back, a soft pressure to show Ray he's there, but not enough to jolt or move him. He feels Ray's breathing even out against his palm.

"Good boy," Brad mutters, quiet.

Watches Ray brush a hand over the bolt again, then stare silently through the scope for a minute. Brad breathing has synched in with Ray’s.

"He's pacing," Ray says.

"I'm going out onto the porch to watch," Trombley says.

"Get going then, and don’t be obvious about it," Brad says, and sees Trombley leg it outside with the spare scope and it's night vision component clipped on. It's the first time he's seen Trombley move like he has to, rather than he’s grudgingly obliging the world. Brad is unsurprised it's the prospect of blood, albeit in glorious greened out, basically two-d vision.

"He's stopped," Ray says, without a glance towards Trombley. He's focused, steady under Brad's hand. Brad watches a drop of sweat slide from a curl of black hair down the back of his neck, under the t-shirt's collar.

"You got the shot, Ray?"

It's not an easy shot in the dark, especially at this range, eight hundred meters is edging up on maximum for the M40.

"Yeah."

"Take it," Brad says.

Ray doesn't need his reassurance, and Brad doesn't have eyes on the target, so all's he's doing is confirming Ray's own decision, but old habits die hard. He always kept a steadying hand or two on learners, easier to correct, or slow them down, or remind them to breath. It was a habit he'd never actually gotten out of with Ray, though.

Ray readjusts his fingers on the gun and there's a ten second lag that feels like slow motion, a moment Brad's intimately familiar with, before Ray squeezes the trigger.

Brad feels the muscles in his shoulders tense as he pull the trigger — it's not a heavy trigger but five pounds isn't nothing either. He takes the shot. The recoil jolts him mildly, shoving back into Brad's hand.

Ray gets his eye back on the scope quick as he can, but he's nodding his head and withdraws the barrel from the hold in the plywood as Trombley comes back inside the house with a happy cry of " _Did you see his fucking head explode!_ Right in his fucking face, man. Good shot."

“Yeah man, well done,” Walt adds and grins at Ray.

Ray actually gives both Walt and Trombley a smile. Good.

Brad realises, after Ray turns that smile on him and it gets bigger and toothier, that he's still go his hand on Ray's back.

He drops his hand.

"Head shot, Ray?"

Ray shrugs.

"Asshole sat down, I had nothing but a face to work with. Too bad he doesn't anymore."

"Good shot, Ray.” And from the shoulder too, Brad feels something like pride. “Right, gentlemen. Get your Kevlar on, we need to be across that field before anyone notices the corpse on the roof."

Brad checks everyone's vests; better safe than dead. He tugs the front of Trombley's vest then pulls the velcro across the ribs undone, it's too loose.

"Re-do that, tighter."

He checks Walt's and they exchange a smile. Walt's squared away. Walt's always been a solid worker, and quick to pick up anything Brad had thrown at him. Brad never felt like he had to worry about Walt.

He turns to Ray who's rolling up the sleeves on his t-shirt so they’re nothing but bunches around his shoulders, apparently he’s hit his limit for tolerating sleeves. His Kevlar vest is still hanging half open, the front swung wide like a door, and Brad forgets entirely whatever it was he was going to say to Ray.

Ray's been hiding something alright, there's a bruised bitemark on his right bicep. There's no obvious indentations of teeth at this point, just a shape Brad is familiar with. They can bruise — exactly like that — in an oval rainbow of broken capillaries. Ray's is monochrome in the low light, but Brad knows there'd be colours there in daylight, dark blue, purple, fading brown-black.

He breathes in sharply through his nose.

"Stop playing with your shirt and strap your fucking vest on Ray.”

Ray looks away from where he's fiddling with his sleeve and meets Brad's eyes, raising an eyebrow.

Brad looks away and presses his vest closed with a slap on his hand, holstering his handgun in the front.

“What? I’m not gonna be any less shot if I leave a thin layer of cotton between my arm and a speeding bullet.”

Brad is thankful for Ray’s apparent assumption that the cause of Brad’s abrupt snap, as if the sharp intake of breath through is nose and tightening of his jaw are symptoms of something nobler than Brad is capable of right now.

Except when Brad’s taken a breath, Ray catches his eye with a look like a dare or a _fuck you_ , reminiscent of Nate’s place where Brad’s fingers had been around his arm. Right about where that bruise is. The bruise Ray’s fingers skim over.

What’s he going to say, here? _Well shit Ray, you’re right, I wasn't looking pissed about how fucked you might be if a bullet hits you anywhere but your vest, I was more thinking of how the only way to get rid of that bruise on your arm would be to obliterate it with a larger one of my own making while trying not to break something or get a fucking hard-on_.

“I can roll them down if you want,” Ray says, tap-tapping his foot on the ground and smirking.

“Let’s go,” Brad says and turns away. Yeah. He's about ready to kill something.

* * *

Brad draws his M9, a comfortable, cool weight in his hand. The thing Brad enjoys about working this kind of job is you know the General is just as excited as Godfather by the prospect of involving police. The General will clean up their mess for them, which is an amusing thought. Brad strokes a finger over the outside of the trigger guard.

They duck through the chainlink fence where it's been torn open and pick a damp path through the overgrown grass, hunched and slow.

It's past midnight and though the rain hasn't returned the stars are still invisible behind the blackout curtains the clouds have drawn. The clouds are rumbling like they're complaining about the humidity as they work themselves up to soaking it out.

It's _dark_. This is good.

They can easily orient themselves by the warehouse’s high windows flashing orange light across the field — theirs is the only warehouse with the lights on. Legitimate workers all clocked off hours ago.

Without the man on the roof who could easily have had thermals or NVGs (unseen does not mean nonexistent, and Brad is completely comfortable with assessing the threat based solely on the man's position), there's less chance they’ll be spotted. If someone comes out for a smoke break within the next minute (not unlikely) they'll be blind enough within the little puddle of yellow light that spills from the door that Brad has no doubt they’d be able to wait them out or take the out.

They set foot on the concrete. Brad glances back and grits his teeth momentarily as he watches Trombley catch his foot on one of the various pieces of trash half buried in the damp grass, only to be saved from faceplanting and further unnecessary noise by Ray grabbing his arm. Brad can't see the look exchanged silently in the dark, but assumes Ray is conveying Brad's displeasure adequately for both of them.

The doorway is surrounded by a semi-circle of cigarette butts, all falling just outside the weak circle of light from the bulb under its awning.

Brad turns to his team and waves them up against the wall, backs flat to the building. If someone comes outside now, it would not be ideal to be caught looking like a bunch idiots having a circle jerk in the dark.

Brad can hear laughter and indistinct speech inside, a few voices.

Time to go.

"Brad," Ray says, quiet and waving the hand not holding his M9 in case Brad misses the near inaudible whisper. Brad shakes his head at Ray. Ray gestures to the door with his gun, and Brad shakes his head again.

He got Ray the first time, and there is absolutely no way anyone but Brad himself is going in point.

This is the dangerous part — he can still hear comfortable talk and laughter, and a few banging noises like something thrown down onto a table — but that isn't a one hundred percent guarantee he's not about to stick his head right into the sights of some asshole's gun.

"Handle," Ray whispers. Brad runs a hand over his throat and hoping Ray takes the _subtle_ hint and attempts no more communication.

He just grins at Brad and flips him the bird, like Brad hadn't also watched each of the men inside take the smoke break and walk inside through the apparently open door (okay, so Ray was probably remembering what Brad was — there'd been that time with the unlocked door and the unnecessary forceful entry, which did not actually need to be reminisced about, ever).

Brad opens the door.

The light is momentarily overwhelming, like a flash going off in his face, Brad keeps his eyes open through it.

There are four men at the table.

Brad breathes in.

Seconds spin out into small eternities.

Brad feels everything settle inside him like sediment at the bottom of deep water.

There are four men, seated at a flimsy table, turning to face him.

Four men. Three exits: a staircase that must lead to the roof top, Brad's right, far wall of the building, past the trucks, the door behind them and the huge roller door to Brad's left. Three trucks. Two hands reaching for weapons. One M249 SAW laying across the small table with a deck of cards stacked on top. A SAW. A fucking SAW.

The fucking SAW says very clearly they had been expecting someone, Brad notes impassively, however the matching fuck doll expressions on the men’s faces say something different. Curiouser and curiouser. He’ll deal with the implications of that later.

"Gentlemen," Brad states loud and clear, and chooses the most likely looking asshole of the bunch to aim his M9 at, "you'll all want to stay very very still. Keep your cards in your hands."

Ray is beside him now, arm straight and gun aimed at the man next to Brad’s. Walt and Trombley are somewhere behind him, then.

"Okay, okay," the man whose forehead Brad has a perfect shot on says. His surprise melts into a placating smile slowly. His teeth are very white underneath a thick dark three day stubble, and there’s a clamped matchstick between his teeth.

"Is that a fucking _SAW_ ," Trombley says, quiet and lustful, and if Brad thought tact were in Trombley in any form, he’d say he hadn’t intended that to be overheard.

They're not going to do this nice and easy. Brad has asked men for cooperation under similar circumstances enough times that he knows, as he meets the steady gaze of the man who he's singled out that there is no way they are going to cooperate.

There’s not a lot of difference between bravery and stupidity in this situation, particularly with that kind of firepower sitting right next to the man. He doesn’t look away.

Brad doesn't know who moves first, but he does know something more important: he knows who shoots first. The man with his stupid-cocky grin takes a bullet to the back of the head and several more on his way down to the ground.

The near silence of the stand-off lingers even after he's hit bottom, bloody and pale, until the air fills with a hail of bullets as the next man moves and everyone follows Brad's fire. The suppressed rounds are more echo than sound, pained groans bouncing back from the gentle click of triggers.

Shell casings clink and bounce off the concrete floor.

Brad feels a spatter across his cheek like the warm rain from earlier. The table is flung over between them and the two men closest to Brad take the SAW down to the ground with them as they slump and slip into a tangled heap, one a deadweight stringless marionette pinning the other down.

The pinned man takes a shot between the eyes while his fingers are scrabbling at the gun in his dead friend’s hands, and Brad is sure, for some reason, that it was Ray's shot.

He can see Ray in the corner of his eye, concentration written in the compressed line of his lips but restless joy by his eyes. Brad doesn't want to look at him dead on right now, can't afford that distraction.

Time drags, like every bullet fired is a neon green second ticking down on a microwave face, a watched pot.

The table obscures the fourth man from view. The SAW is safely situated on their side of the obstacle, however. Brad holds up a hand. The air is full of gun smoke and copper, cigarettes burnt and unburnt, and moaning.

"Nice shot," Walt says, without any particular tone, from behind Brad. Brad glances at Ray, by his side, and the over his shoulder to where Ray's looking at Trombley and nodding. Trombley looks as if he's just blown a load with the girl of his dreams, a gentle smile on his lips.

He looks young.

"Oh fuck," a voice comes from the other side of the table, high pitched as a prepubescent ladyboy. "My fucking hand, oh.”

Brad gestures for Ray to move left as he moves right, and as he rounds the table he sees the man holding his right hand, bleeding in pulses across his shirt, coming up with a gun in his left —

"Down!" Brad orders sharply.

The air is shattered by the crack of unsuppressed fire and Brad hits the deck before glancing over his shoulder and taking in an unharmed Ray grinning, Trombley still smiling faintly, head up, and Walt holding up a thumbs-up: fine.

On the other side of the table Brad can hear the man breathing heavily.

Brad feels the graze a second later, a hot itch on his shoulder, before the intense sting starts up in earnest with the trickling flow of blood. He glances down at his right shoulder. It's shallow and won't impede movement.

"Brad," Ray says.

"Superficial," he replies. It’s not worth wasting breath on.

"Drop the fucking gun, fucknuts, before I come around that table and beat you to death with it!" Ray calls.

"Shut up, Ray."

"He fucking shot you," Ray says indignantly.

"Fuck you! DAVE," the man behind the table calls. It's the plaintive bleat of a wounded animal. "Daaa-ve! Where the fuck _are you_ you fucking…" he trails off, groaning. Dave must be their man on the roof.

Brad and Ray exchange a look.

"Dave can't come to the phone right now," Ray shouts over the top of him, "he's currently lacking a _face_."

They need to silence this guy before someone who isn't dead hears him, though the possibility is extremely remote it’s not worth the chance. There's the definitely possibility that if they keep on their bellies with the table between them and wait he'll loose enough blood he won't even be able to get the weight of the gun up in front of him.

Brad inches his way closer to Ray.

He can barely hear the sound of laboured breathing, but the man doesn't call out anymore.

"Talk to him," Brad says, shoulder pressed to Ray's.

"Hey asshole!" Ray yells.

There is no reply.

Brad is about to get up into a crouch and take a chance peering around the table, but Ray puts a hand flat on his shoulder blade and pushes him down. Brad shakes his hand off.

"Ray."

Ray is already up. Brad frowns, settles into a crouch and watches him.

Walt gets up with him. They both inch tentatively and bent double to different sides of the table, guns up. They peer around at the same time.

"He's out," Walt says. Brad’s not surprised.

Walt and Ray make their way around the table.

Brad jumps up off the floor. Walt’s standing with a foot on the side of the guy's neck, looking over his shoulder questioningly.

"He's down for the count," Walt says.

Walt, for a cold blooded killer, is sometimes kinder than Brad would like.

The man is breathing shallow and fast. He’s not quite down. Brad knows he's awake. His bleeding hand is stretched in front of him, reaching faintly towards the gun that's been kicked out his hand by either Ray or Walt. He can't yell under the pressure of Walt's boot, but he's going to the second the pressure comes off.

He's going to try to, anyway.

Brad shakes his head, and raises his gun.

The man's head smacks audibly on the concrete, body jerking, as a bullet passes through his temple before Brad shoots.

“He fucking shot you,” Ray repeats, and shrugs at Brad like whaddayagonnado.

Brad immediately buries any feelings he might have under the miles of ocean deep calm flowing through him. They have cigarettes to deliver.

Walt shakes his foot faintly and dislodges a spatter red. It gets swallowed up by the growing puddle as the man's head and hand wounds seep together slowly to form one sticky puddle.

“Man,” Trombley says and sits down on the sole chair that's still standing. With the bodies, bullet casings and the overturned table around Trombley, he looks like he’s been caught in the eye of a particularly focused tornado. Trombley puts his boot against the back of the nearest corpse and shoves so it rolls over. There’s a playing card stuck to the side of the corpse’s face, a bloody two of hearts. “That kicked ass.”

"The job isn't over yet, Trombley," Brad says. “We need keys,” Brad points to the trucks, lined up in a neat little row their backdoors to them.

"Yeah, Trombley, I bet you're one of those rude motherfuckers that blows his load and doesn't even give —" Ray's cut off by gunfire, three shots slam into the trucks, thankfully having gone massively wide.

Brad glances over at the sound of the massive roller door screeching up just enough to let three men in underneath it, ducked down and nearly crawling. The shots had gone wide because someone was stupid enough to start shooting without actually being able to see exactly where he was aiming yet, still half-ducked under the door.

  
[  
](http://swear-jar.livejournal.com/936531.html#cutid1)This is not the fucking job Brad had signed up for anymore. It had gone beyond it with the SAW, but this was another level of shit that wasn’t so easily explained. C'est la vie (Brad’s, anyway) and time to get the fuck on with it.

"MOVE," Brad yells, and has to take two steps towards the men who come in through the roller door as it rises so he can grab Trombley by the collar and tug him to his feet. He gives him a good shove towards where Walt and Ray have already ducked behind the nearest truck, backs flat against its side and guns drawn.

He gets off one shot before he gives it up when he hears a sharp whistle that means a bullet has just passed far too close to his ear for comfort, and can only watch as one last man slings himself under the door and behind another of the cigarette trucks, the furthest away from them.

Brad registers faintly that he’s angry. The idea of Nate knowingly having sent them into this is less than pleasing, but whether it’s Nate or Godfather, or both, or some other bullshit that’s landed them in this, there isn’t time to dwell. Brad just can’t be mad in a firefight.

“No one grabbed the fucking SAW?” Ray says, and Brad glances out to the overturned table and the machine gun still laying next to it.

“No one includes you, Ray,” Brad replies. Fortunately, this fresh batch of assholes hadn’t taken the time to grab it either.

They are at am impasse. Equal cover, nearly equal numbers, Brad is unsure what firepower they have, but he is sure there isn’t another SAW or anything as large entering the equation, even at a glance he would not have missed that.

“This is some fucked-up shit,” Ray says.

“Who the fuck are they?” Walt asks.

“There is no point in speculation at this point,” Brad says.

He glances around the edge of the truck, looks past its closed back doors and pulls his head back just in time to avoid getting hit as someone peers around the other truck.

They take a few more pointless shots at nothing, enough to stop Brad returning fire, but ultimately a waste of ammunition.

“Hey,” Trombley says. “We should get the SAW.”

“Negative, Trombley, that’s too much of a risk at this point.”

“He’s right,” Ray says.

“Obviously,” Brad says.

“Trombley is,” Ray qualifies.

Brad looks at him with all the _what the shit you whisky tango retard_ he can convey silently. Ray shrugs and glances at the floor before meeting Brad’s eyes again, looking vaguely disgusted with having to agree with Trombley.

Ray had better give him a good reason; Brad needs these next few minutes to think and think fast before someone behind the other truck decides to take the action back into their own hands. They need to be on the offensive, not the defensive, and they need to do it both fast and safe. They’re not taking a run at them while the other men have the same cover they do.

Brad raises his eyebrows at Ray when he’s been silent for a few seconds, for once in his life Ray isn’t elaborating on his thoughts.

“Ray, feel free to elaborate on that,” Brad says. “Fast.”

Ray just looks downwards and tilts his head. Brad follows his gaze towards the undercarriage of the truck, and _gets_ it when Ray clicks his fingers together and points.

 _I want to kiss you_ , Brad does not say. He doesn’t even think it.

It’s a bloody-minded idea, and Brad likes it.

Their only clear line of sight at the other men is directly underneath both the trucks, but there is no point either giving them time for this to occur to them naturally or to attempt to hit each man with only their pistols: too slow, too much room for error, too much time for returned fire, not enough stopping power in a nine millimetre if they only have boots and shins to aim for.

The SAW, though: that’s a different story.

“Ray,” Brad says, “talk to them.” They can’t get the same idea and Brad will need a distraction for this. Brad crouches down where he is and peers around the corner of the truck briefly, head down low.

“It’s fucking hot in here, isn’t it?” Ray half-yells towards the ceiling, bumping the back of his head lightly against the side of the truck. "Are you guys sweating or what? Dave? I assume one of you is Dave. Dave, it's that goddamn hot in here my balls are sweating.”

Ray glances at Brad and Brad nods, _keep talking_.

There’s no one watching, as Brad peers around the back of the truck again.

“Freeballin' was _not_ the best option. Right? Right? Don't talk to me then, man," Ray says, without pausing to allow a reply, "but I bet your balls are sweating over there too."

“If you put your weapons on the ground and step out from behind this car, we will not shoot you,” a deeply-accented voice replies, from somewhere behind the next truck.

"Brad, you're humming," Ray says, quietly, just for Brad, before launching back into his torrent of filth for enemy ears.

"I’d like to tell you to shut up, Ray," Brad whispers, “but keep fucking talking.”

"Okay, but I think you're freaking Walt and Trombley out."

Trombley does not appear freaked out.

Trombley appears to be ecstatically happy with being shot at. Not entirely normal, but normal reactions to combat do not make a good killer. It’s not terribly far away from Brad’s feeling of Rudy-esque Zen.

Anyway, it’s Ray’s fault he has _Cold as Ice_ in his head. Brad eyes off the SAW across the concrete. It’s only a few feet. He gets down low and makes the brief dash across the fifteen feet of open space in the time it takes to make it though another verse, moving fast but not at a run, no unnecessary noise.

The SAW is heavy in Brad’s hand, but he hefts it quiet as he can and gets his ass back behind the truck.

“Seriously,” Ray says loudly, “fucking ball sweat.”

No one shoots.

Brad breathes for a moment, crouched against the truck’s back wheel.

“Trombley, tell me you’ve fired one of these before,” Brad says quietly and gestures from Trombley to couch next to him, settling the SAW quietly on its bipod.

Trombley nods quick and enthusiastic and reaches out to run a hand over the gun.

Someone leans out and shoots, Brad presumes as much to shut Ray up as anything else. Wouldn't be the first time Ray's mouth has incited violence.

Brad gets down on his stomach next to Trombley, who’s checking the SAW over, as Ray speaks over the top of series small metallic noises. Trombley clearly knows what he’s doing. Brad glances underneath the two trucks to the other side where three sets of booted feet stand in a row.

"Aw," Ray says, and glances around the corner of the truck, head ducked low. Another three shots come in quick succession and Ray laughs, tapping his foot by Brad’s head. "You're sensitive. No need to get mad, homes! Are you one of those guys that gets funky balls? All parmesan cheese smelling flake-y shit huh? It's okay man, there's totally ways to get rid of that —

"You, the very rude one, you need to have your mouth washed with soap — you will not live long enough for that, however.”

Brad pegs the one who’s been talking as possible hired security, though Brad doesn’t know every man the General has. Maybe he’s fucking Godfather’s, at this point, Brad doesn’t feel it would be wise to rule anything out while they’re still in the midst of this fuckery.

"You know what's weird?" Ray replies, "I was going down on your mom last night and when I came up for some fresh air I had to tell her she might wanna invest in some serious douching, and okay, maybe I called her a dirty fucking cunt, but _man_ , you try being nice when you've got a mouthful of femme fresh and cunt porridge — and she said _exactly that_. I totally took her up on the soap, too, I mean anything to get rid of that fucking _taste_ ," Ray's talking loud enough they can hear, but as Brad looks over at him, he's leaning with his shoulder against the side of the truck watching Brad and Trombley set up the SAW as he talks, his mouth is running while his attention is entirely focused on Brad, on the gun.

Ray’s foot tap tap taps beside Brad’s head.

Brad reaches over and puts his hand down over Ray’s boot and pins his foot, the incessant tapping stops and at the same time, Ray stops talking.

“Any time you’re ready, Trombley,” Brad says, his eyes on Trombley handling the gun like an old and cherished pet.

He flicks the safety off, and lays the three foot of ammunition reverently out across the concrete floor. Snaps it open and takes a final glance inside, is apparently satisfied, closes and cocks it.

Brad has seen a SAW turn a an old junker into swiss cheese, though he hasn’t ever handled one himself (he is in no way giving this one up until he gets to unload it himself, even if it’s only on the backwoods firing range he and Ray occasionally let off steam at).

“Ready,” Trombley says, slipping his finger into the trigger guard.

The SAW is loud, louder than Ray on coke, louder than Brad’s Ducati, loud like a motherfucker, it eats up a foot of ammo in a few deafening seconds.

Brad plugs his ears and watches the destruction it reaps: the tearing of clothing and skin and bones alike, the men collapse like buildings being demolished, implosions in the foundations tearing down the whole structure, blood flies instead of dust and debris.

Brad feels a little bit of that Zen Rudy always talked about.

He hum as he picks off each man as they fall, the first two with clean headshots with his pistol and the last he has to wound a few times to get him to uncurl from the inconvenient position he’s scrambled screaming into, knees to his forehead, clutching his shattered shins.

Trombley's got the SAW set up and cocked again, the other screwed shut — ready to cut up the fallen men — Brad taps him lightly on the arm and can almost see the bubble of focussed joy pop Trombley turns towards him and Brad shakes his head.

Negative. Trombley takes a proper look at the dead, both eyes open this time.

Kid definitely had focus. Maybe a little too much focus.

Ray's head appears abruptly next to Brad as he presses himself palms, knees and ear to the concrete to peer underneath the trucks.

"Well, that certainly had an effect," Ray says, half-mumbled into the floor.

Brad can see bone protruding from a flimsily attached boot.

"Ray, when you're right, you're right."

"Cool," Trombley says.

"Pretty cool," Brad agrees. He's definitely keeping that gun.

Ray bounces back to his feet as Brad hauls himself up off the concrete, his right arm feeling a little stiff toward the shoulder from the graze. He puts a hand on it and the material is sticky, but not wet. Good.

Ray holds out his fist and Brad bumps knuckles with him left handed.

"Walt, you should totally check it out," Ray says and gets an arm over Walt's neck. He clings, trying to drag him down. Walt doesn't give him the satisfaction of bending into the headlock and shakes Ray off without answering.

Brad allows them the brief celebration being that that was fairly fucking spectacular. But they've got to move. It's past one. Ray’s glowing, and clearly pumped — they all are, they just kicked some ass, and it’s hot in here, so they’re all damp around the collar and red faced.

Brad twigs abruptly that Ray isn’t completely sober. Should have picked that earlier.

"Right," Brad says and waits for all eyes on him, “keys. Walt, sift through the clusterfuck around the table, Ray, take a walk since you can’t stop tapping your fucking feet anyway, Trombley, we’re rolling corpses.”

The poker players seem most likely to have keys. The body of the first man Brad shot is lying face up where Trombley had rolled him. He’s staring upwards at Brad with dull eyes like a bloody porcelain doll — like one of his sister’s dolls. He reaches down and closes them. He’s not superstitious, he just prefers them not to stare (he’d never liked playing in his sister’s rooms, cabinets full of quiet dead eyes watching everything).

He pats the corpse’s shirt pockets, then works a hand into the front pocket of his jeans — his fingers hit metal and he pulls out keys, the metal still body warm.

Brad whistles and holds the keys out jingling in the air.

“I win.”

“Every time,” Ray mumbles. He’s shuffling around checking under the truck tyres in case anyone’s done the obvious and left the keys perched under the rims.

“Two more to go,” Walt says, then laughs. “Check it out, looks like they were playing poker with some seriously high stakes,” Walt holds up a dollar bill and a banana. “Plus there’s cigarettes everywhere.”

Ray laughs and walks over, holding his hand out and wiggling his fingers. Walt tosses him the fruit.

"Did you know you can get high off bananas?" Ray says, holding up the half eaten fruit by the end.

"No you can't," Trombley says. He looks up at Brad with his hand in a dead man’s pocket, as if for confirmation Ray's full of shit. "You can't, can you?"

Brad shrugs. It’s beneath him to dignify that with an answer, and it’s more amusing to watch Trombley’s face as he tries to figure out if Ray’s being sarcastic. He likes the evil smirk that’s lurking at the corners of Ray’s lips.

"Yeah, man," Ray says, "you know that fuckin' song? They call me mellow yelllooow. I mean listen to that shit, you know it's about drugs. It's about fucking bananadine, but you’re not meant to know about that shit. You get a shit ton of bananas and skin those bitches, then boil the peels, bake that shit, and you end up with this stuff that looks like gunpowder and makes you see demons coming out of your wallpaper."

"So if it's so secret, how come you know?" Trombley narrows his eyes.

"Internet," Walt surmises with a snort.

Ray laughs.

"Whatever Walt, just because your mom smokes bananas."

"Two your mom jokes in the last ten minutes,” Brad shakes his head in faux disappointment. “Is your head clear, Ray?”

"What're you implying Braaaad?"

"I think he’s implying you’re high as fuck,” Walt says. He dodges the banana as Ray throws it at him.

"I resent that, I am on nothing nothing nothing," Ray says, then pauses to swipe a bloody dollar note off the floor and stuff it happily in his pocket, "I took like, a few Adderall XRs, that shit is practically legal."

"My little brother used to have to take that, he’s got that attention deficit disorder,” Trombley pipes up.

Ray grins. "See, Brad? You keep telling me I act like a retarded twelve year old with ADD."

“Shut up and find the other keys.”

Brad checks his found set on the closest truck. Not strictly necessary, but this clusterfuck is starting to lend some possible truth to Ray’s earlier conspiracy theories. No matter what cigarettes are worth, the amount of security was ridiculous for people who should not have been expecting anyone. He tries the truck’s back doors and they swing open, already unlocked.

He’s face to face with a wall of boxes, one of which has been torn open. It’s full of cigarette boxes, which makes clearer approximately nothing.

Brad sighs.

He’s swinging the door shut when Ray bumps his shoulder into Brad’s uninjured arm., drawn close by the prospect of free cigarettes. Brad’s got no problem with Ray’ pilfering, Godfather isn’t going to miss a few cartons from an already half looted box. Plus Brad feels they deserve the bonus after unfucking this situation successfully. Godfather can take it up with Brad personally should he miss a box or two.

Ray looks up at him, leaning into Brad’s arm with his bare shoulder, and gives him a wide-eyed pleading look. Brad looks down and shrugs.

“Take whatever you want.”

Ray reaches past and tears into a carton, pulls out and opens a packet. He deposits the packet in his back pocket, then perches a cigarette precariously on his lower lip.

“Aw, my fuckin’ zippo, shit,” Ray says after a thoughtful second.

Brad still has Ray’s lighter. He’d pocketed it with his keys. He pulls it out of his front pocket and flicks it on, holding the flame out to Ray.

“Brad, you are straight up my fucking hero,” Ray says and leans into Brad’s hand, cupping his fingers around Brad’s to light the cigarette.

Ray doesn’t ask for it back, just blows smoke out his nose and calls _Walt_! Over his shoulder. Brad slips the lighter back into his pocket and shuts the back doors of the truck.

Ray waves his cigarette under Walt’s nose.

“There's enough smokes there to kill the fucking Malboro man,” Walt says. He waves Ray’s second hand smoke away violently.

“Come on Sunshine, let’s race! First one to die of lung cancer wins,” Ray says, mumbling the last words around a long drag.

“Ray, stop fucking around, we’re still down two sets of keys.”

“One set,” Walt says and holds out an identical set to Brad’s. “Get out of my face, Ray,” he laughs and shoves at Ray. Ray backs off a step when Ray swings at him jokingly and blows a smoke ring at Walt in retaliation.

“That’s good, Walt,” Brad acknowledges.

“So where the fuck are the other ones then?” Ray asks, bending over a body and rifling through the pockets. “Brad, this is not time for your weird ass thing about dead people staring at you, you have got to get into these bastards front pockets like you’re committing an act of necrophilia. Seriously I think I just felt cock.”

Brad ignores Ray and kicks lightly through the cards and debris on the ground around the overturned table. There’s a dollar bill stuck to the floor with blood. Next to it there are fingers. One that looks to be someone’s index finger, and a little bit of a fingertip a nail shot through, torn and dangling. Brad bends and retrieves the fingers, and grins to himself.

Ray needs to learn not to bring up Brad’s entirely understandable foibles in public.

“Hey Ray,” he says and waits until Ray straightens up and faces him, “catch.”

Ray puts his hands out automatically and the expression on his face as he closes his fingers on the tepid damp skin is almost funnier than when he opens his hand and actually realises what he’s caught. He catapults them back towards Brad with a violent flick of his open palm.

“FUCK you Brad, you sick fuck!

“Says the man who just told me to aim for necrophilia.”

Ray has a stronger stomach than almost anyone Brad’s met, he’s seen Ray joke by painting little stripes of war paint on with someone else’s blood, but he cannot stand severed limbs. Brad, on the other hand, couldn't care less, it’s all meat.

“That’s it!” Ray yells and points a bloody finger at Brad. “I’m going to check that office or whatever for the fucking keys.” Ray gestures with a fling of his arm towards the smaller room within the warehouse, wiping his palms off on his pants a few times in disgust before stomping off.

“Like I asked you to in the first place,” Brad calls after him, and grins. Ray gives him the finger and slams the door behind him. He’ll get over it.

Walt is still bent over laughing and gives Brad a smile when he looks up.

Brad kicks the fingers with the toe of his boot.

“Lucky shot,” he observes.

"Saw his hand creeping up on the SAW and all I could think was _no you fucking don't_ ," Trombley says.

“Good shot man,” Walt says.

As a deliberate shot, it was beyond good.

"Good shot, Trombley,” Brad acknowledges, “but in the future there is no reason not to go straight for a good clean kill shot in a real fight: chest, head, wherever you've got it. Don’t fuck around with your life, and more importantly don’t fuck with mine.”

Trombley looks sullen and doesn't reply.

"Trombley, you got me?" Brad asks.

"Yeah."

"Good."

The lights go out.

"What fresh new _hell_ ," Brad spits under his breath and puts his back against the wall before gesturing at the vague, shadowy shapes of Walt and Trombley violently until they hit the wall on the other side of the door to Brad — glass shatters somewhere, and Brad thinks _Ray_ , but the door's swinging open. Brad can't see Walt and Trombley for a second, but he can see someone walking in, gun up and NVGs on making their silhouette in the dark look monstrous.

The door swings shut with a bang and it's echoed by an explosion of gunfire from all sides and Brad knows they're briefly on even ground as the muzzle flashes would have whited-out their night vision.

Brad hits the deck to avoid friendly fire and hopes Walt and Trombley were clever enough to do the same on the other side. There’s silence.

"Brad!" Walt calls from somewhere, scrabbling for lights.

"I'm fine!" Brad calls.

"They cut the power," Walt says.

Brad can see him in silhouette flicking at a light switch ineffectually.

"Trombley, are you good?"

"I'm good," Trombley says. He's standing over the body nearest to Brad and prodding it in the back with the end of what looks like a pipe, until he flicks the switch on and Brad realises it's a long metal torch.

Jesus fucking Christ, Brad is _displeased_.

Words. He and Nate are having _words_ , he and Godfather are having _words_.

This thing never felt good and Brad is about at his limit, and where the fuck is Ray. This is a fuck up, this is a travesty, this is, Brad imagines, exactly what being fucked dry feels like. He has actually emptied his M9’s entire cartridge tonight.

He dusts himself off and feels his heart beat fast for the first time all night; where the fuck is Ray. Shattered glass, three more dead men and silence.

"Ray!"

Silence.

"Ray!" Brad yells again, already halfway to the door. He turns and hold out a hand to stop Walt following. “Walt, hold position in case there’s more surprises, I’m going to look for Ray.”

“Fucking fucking fuck fuck —" Brad hears Ray’s voice, quiet and tense. Brad shoves the door open.

The office lights are on, the fluorescent tubes casting an unpleasant light that heightens the greyness of Ray's face, his eyes are big and bruised looking. He’s clutching his leg and clenching his teeth and bleeding out.

He’s pale, far too pale, normally tanned skin turning to chalk.

Brad’s ears fill with whitenoise, like being dumped by a wave, and he rides it out as he would there, letting it wash over him ( _don’t leave me_ ) before striking out under his own steam again.

His normal tan erased.

He's bleeding through the cage of his fingers pressed to his upper thigh, a sluggish pulse, the front of his dark jeans shiny-wet spreading from the wound to his knee, and up to his crotch. He's sitting with his back against the wall and with his legs out straight, and a foot from his boot soles there's a man who's rapidly bleeding out.

Ray’s kicks once with his uninjured leg, foot colliding weakly with the groaning man at his feet. He’s facedown and incapacitated, but alive.

“ _Fuck_ you,” Ray says to the man through a grit toothed wince. The man is silent except for faint whining breathes, his arms tucked under his body and blood seeping outwards.

“Brad,” Ray looks up at him and Brad drops to his knees beside Ray.

"Sorry," Ray says.

There’s a man draped over the desk in the centre of the room, a knife in his neck and Ray’s gun on the table beside him. Unfired. Brad hadn’t heard it. There’s a halo of blood sliding slow to the edge of the desk dripping _pat pat pat_ onto the concrete.

They’re all wearing Kevlar and dodging bullets and Ray’s managed to get himself _stabbed_ in the fucking thigh. The window into the room from outside has been broken inwards.

There’s glass shining in the dead man’s hair and over the desk.

Brad’s kneeling in the warm puddle spilling out from underneath Ray’s thigh. Ray’s blood. Not what he should be focusing on. He grabs Ray’s hands to press them firmer onto the wound, he’s bleeding too fast. It’s high on his thigh, but it’s not the femoral artery. It’s too slow for that, Ray would have been gone.

There’s silence and Brad clenches his teeth.

“Sorry, Brad. I put my gun down for one second,” Ray’s voice is too quiet. “I found the keys.”

“Look at me, Ray,” his eyes slip away from Brad’s. “Ray! Look at me. Keep pressure on the wound.”

He’s not dying right now. Ray is not dying with Brad right there, that isn’t happening. Brad refuses. He squeeze his fingers over Ray’s, then grabs the keys off the floor with his free hand and squeezes them too, until his palm aches.

“Ray, look at me.”

“Brad, you’re kind of hurting my leg. More. Than it already does. Fuck, that hurts,” Ray looks up at him like Brad’s going to fix it, and puts his other hand over the top of Brad’s. His fingers are wet.

Trombley and Walt appear in the doorway.

Brad pockets the keys and withdraws his hand from between Ray’s. He doesn’t take a breath, he has no time.

“Pressure, Ray. Trombley, open that fucking roller door all the way and take the truck, direct to the address Nate gave you. Walt, help me with Ray into the other truck.”

Brad and Walt grab Ray under the arms, so he keeps his grip on his leg. He bares his teeth in a grin of pain.

Ray doesn't weigh much (doesn't weigh enough), which may be because he's still just awake enough not to be dead weight, one foot touching the floor every few steps.

For a moment as Walt pops the truck's front door open Brad supports Ray's full weight and he's a little more solid than Brad expected, there's some comfort in the weight. Ray breathes harshly against Brad's neck. His grip on his leg is tight enough his fingers are white.

He doesn’t make a comment about the marriage hold, or not being the chick here. He doesn’t say anything. It’s unsettling. Brad focuses on the strength still in the arm Ray has around his neck.

Walt helps him heft Ray into the cab, and settle him uncomfortably onto the bench seat.

Brad glances at Ray's face and attempts a smile — Ray laughs faintly at whatever expression it is Brad does manage. Walt starts the truck.

"My place is closest," Brad talks over the top of Walt’s protest, and Walt shuts his mouth and listens. “Call Doc on the way. I'll meet you there," and rattles off his address.

Walt goes. Brad turns back to the office.

The man is still on the floor, his legs visible through the open door.

Brad steps over him and does not pause to examine whatever it is that shoots through him, he does pause however to yank to knife from the dead man's neck.

He turns back and watches the man’s legs moving in a slow jerking pattern against the carpet, his cheek pressed to the floor, hands bent underneath his body like a dying roach. Trying to push himself somewhere — towards the wall, to attempt standing, go for a phone? Brad isn’t sure why the man thinks he’ll be getting up.

Brad guesses a gut wound, and when he nudges the man over with his boot he’s gratified both by the fact he's right and that Ray had got some of his own back before hitting the floor. Gut wounds are a slow and immensely painful way to go.

The man's scrabbling legs are ineffective because he obviously cannot bring himself to move his hands from his stomach. The front of his shirt is slashed and bloody around his white knuckled grip, the red stain spilling over his sides. They’re knife wounds, and they look deep.

His legs scrabble double time and he moves one hand finally to push himself backwards when he sees Brad, but he's slow and weak and Brad's foot is on his neck. His free hand comes up immediately to grasp at Brad's ankle, fingers slipping slick and clumsy off the leather of his boot, grasping loosely at his pants and tugging.

Brad applies a measured amount of pressure and the hand falls completely away, the man nodding frantically with Brad's bootlaces scraping the underside of his chin.

Brad keeps eye contact with his wide-eyed friend and he removes his boot, and the man remains still. He squats by his side, one hand loose-wristed over his knee, the other holding the knife just out of sight at his side, and waits for his eyes to stop their spooked horse rolling, waits for his breathing to quiet a little.

The man's breathing does not approach anything like normal, but it slows, just slightly.

Brad pries the man's fingers away and gets a breathless "please" for his trouble, but the man is docile, paralysed by fear or hope. Brad holds his stiff sticky fingers away and slips the point of his knife gently under the shirt, shushing him as he looks.

The wound is two wounds, two deep ragged cuts that have hernia like protrusions beating with a fast pulse, muscle or intestine. Brad curls his lip and expression half disgust, half satisfaction.

He lets the man's hand fall, watches as he jerks intensely as he can’t quite keep it from slapping down on his torn stomach. Brad grins down at him.

"Please," the man says. “Call an ambulance for me. Please. Please, you can call when you’re already out gone. Please, go. Call from a payphone.”

Brad _hm_ s noncommittally.

"Tell me how you knew we were here?"

"Please," the man repeats, "I swear if you call the ambulance I will tell you everything I will pay you what they were paying me, please."

"Slow down," Brad suggests, patiently. "You can answer me first. Who’s paying you?"

He shakes his head violently, pale faced and sweating. “Francis MacIntyre. Killed. His… son. You killed his son — please this hurts.” He takes a long breath. “Said you had to go, had to.”

Interesting, since Brad had watched Ray kill three _bodyguards_ in front of Francis, and otherwise they had had no contact with the man. Though it is hard to doubt the honesty of a dying man. He tells it quick and desperate. Nate must have known.

The man breathes please again. Some other time, his compliance might have gotten him a reprieve, but Brad isn’t in a forgiving mood.

The man's hands grip his stomach and he curls in on himself.

“Don’t leave me like this,” he says. He meets Brad’s eyes, face sweating and pale, eyes wet.

It would be far crueller to let him writhe away into the dawn. In a way he is lucky that Brad has no intention of letting him go so awkwardly when he can finish the job himself.

“Okay,” Brad says, “okay,” and places his hand over the man's eyes, brings the knife around quickly to his throat. He presses tip first so it’s quick and deep — it’s both harder and easier to do than people expect. You don’t have to cut so deeply, but it is quicker if you do. The man's hands only make it high enough off his stomach to fall back limp at his sides. The burst of blood is less than it would be had he not been a few hours away from bleeding everything in him out through his gut.

Brad still has to wipe his chin with the collar of his shirt. He brushes the man's eyes closed.

It's not as satisfying as it should have been. He stands, frustrated, and throws the knife so it lands point down in the corpse.

Brad doesn’t have time for this clusterfuck. Whatever _this_ is. Nate had sent them to Francis, and into this, and now Ray was bleeding somewhere. Brad is seriously displeased.

He and Nate are going to have some serious words. Brad would dearly like to know what the _fuck_ is going on, but before that, before he takes his next breath, he needs to see Ray.

* * *

  
Brad leaves the last truck at the drop-off, parked neatly beside the others, and takes the nondescript sedan Nate's provided. Trombley protests at being left stranded, the car keys hanging slackly from his hand, and Brad is cannot muster words for how little he cares. It’s far simpler to shove Trombley against the wall with one hand in the collar of his shirt and yank the keys away with the other.

* * *

The old woman who supplies Brad with inedible baked goods cracks her door to the limit of the chain and presses her wizened face to gap, she startles when she sees Brad and slams the door shut again. Brad walks on.

He’d given Walt his address without thinking. No doubt he'll have to move very soon, but so long as Ray’s still breathing —

So long as Ray's still breathing.

Walt opens the door before Brad gets his key in the lock.

Walt gets out of his way without saying anything.

Doc Bryan greets him with a frown and Brad waves him off before he can open his mouth. He must look something like how he's feeling, because Doc Bryan does not shut his mouth that easily when he’s got something to say.

"He's okay," Walt calls, as Brad shoves the bedroom door open. “He’s fine.”

Ray coughs out a surprised laugh then screws his eyes shut when Brad bursts in. When he opens his eyes again slowly he looks up at Brad with a smile on his lips.

“Braaaaad,” Ray says quietly and waves limply before letting his hand fall back to the mattress. Brad has a distinct feeling Ray isn’t actually meant to be awake right now. His body is limp and lax and gives the impression, other than his eyes and mouth, that he’s already half asleep.

He’s obviously feeling no pain.

Ray’s propped up on both Brad’s pillows and a couch cushion, pale and grinning and alive, skinny legged in nothing but underwear and a fresh shirt ( _another_ one of Brad’s), with a hand over the bandages covering his thighs.

His hand is dark and relaxed over the white of the bandage; he’s not holding himself together anymore.

Brad nods and sits down on the edge of the bed, turns towards Ray. He takes a deep breath and lets his shoulders slump, abruptly feeling tired. The light outside the window is a blood-red dawn and it’s seeping in the gap between Brad’s heavy bedroom curtains, turning the light orange and red and gold like stained glass.

“Is that the third shirt of mine you’ve stolen?” Brad says, feeling the corners of his lips quirk. “I don’t own that many shirts, Ray.”

Ray presses the collar of the shirt up to his face and mumbles into it, “I like your clothes, you smell good. You smell really fucking good, Brad. Have I ever mentioned how fucking good you smell?” Ray’s eyelids droop. He rubs the shirt collar against his face, nuzzling into it comfortably. “Fuck, Brad, forget I said that. Or you know, don’t.” Ray smiles, tilting his head back so it seems as if the corners of his lips are only held in a faint close mouthed smile by gravity.

He closes his eyes for a long moment.

When he looks back at Brad he laughs for no particular reason. “Hi, hiii, oh shit Brad. Doc Bryan gave me some fucking oxytoofuckinggood shit.”

Brad feels very far from amused now, but finds himself laughing a choked sort of chuckle he can’t hold back. He reaches out and touches Ray’s cheek. He’s too tired to resist the urge, relief as big a high as adrenaline.

Ray’s face is still pale, and the blood on Brad’s hands stands out vividly against his skin.

He’s touching Ray. When he strokes his thumb across Ray’s cheekbone it trails dirty marks like warpaint. Ray leans heavily into the touch with a noise like he’s hurting.

Their faces are very close, and Brad’s sure his heart never beat this fast when worked, when he fucked, not for a long, long time. Ray’s eyes are very dark this close, darker than usual. Brad wants to erase every mark on him, go over every inch of skin and bite bruises over bruises, put his own stitches into Ray’s leg.

Ray licks Brad’s lower lip and Brad bites back, lightly. His hand finds the skin of Ray’s thigh, fingertips brush hair and skin until his finds the edges of the bandage and strokes lightly.

“Ray. I want to fuck you.”

Brad feels his face heat, because that was the _wrong_ thing to say (honest and wrong, Brad’s painfully familiar with the combination).

But Ray leans back in and kisses him fiercely, and Brad can’t, doesn’t want to do anything but kiss back.

They both make a sound into the kiss. His bed, his shirt, _his_.

Brad’s hand tightens on Ray’s arm and very carefully not on Ray’s thigh, and Ray licks at his mouth (the way he kisses is exactly _Ray_ , open-mouthed and dirty), except he pulls back to lick Brad’s bottom lip and misses, striping his tongue over Brad’s chin, slow and stoned.

“You know you’re covered in blood,” Ray says, laughing. He pats clumsily at Brad’s cheek and twines his fingers with Brad to hold his hand out, pressing his cheek to Brad’s mouth as he turns his head to stare at the red streak across Brad’s knuckles.

Ray’s eyebrows and eyelashes are a dark blur this close. Brad drags his teeth gently over Ray’s cheekbone, then takes a breath against Ray’s skin and tells himself to slow down.

He glances at his own hand, cheek against Ray’s. He hadn’t thought to clean himself up, which is a kick in the guts because he _always_ thinks.

“You taste like it,” Ray says, turning so his lips are back against Brad’s. Brad hums and bites him (gently).

All he can taste is Ray, and the string of antiseptic drifting up from the bandaged wound.

Brad tightens teeth and hands on Ray. He leans down on Ray's leg as he shifts forward to kiss him and Ray whines, " _Brad_ , Brad, fuck," and Brad leans back quickly and takes his hand off Ray, feeling the beat of his own heart again.

There’s a spot of blood blossoming in the centre of the white square of bandage, uneven edged and rosy. Brad watches it slow and stop, thumb print sized.

When he looks up, Ray smiles and fumbles for Brad’s hand, tugs it back to where it was resting over the stained white. Brad fingers the material then slips his hand lower, mostly onto Ray’s skin.

Doesn’t want to open the stitches (the consequences of that are stopping, calling for Doc Bryan to come into the room).

Brad feels strangely calm, he knows there's panic coming because this is a monumental fuck-up, but it's easy to shove down right now with Ray alive under him. He realises after a minute he still feels like he's fighting, his thoughts and feelings are still floating somewhere quiet and only faintly connected to the _action_ of here and now; the blood in his mouth and the teeth he's sinking into Ray's lip until Ray makes a sound and he gentles himself, a little, just as much as he can.

And his hand on Ray’s thigh and his fingertips at the edges of the bandage, pressing into material and skin. He doesn't want to let go.

He keeps kissing Ray until Ray shoves at him, a weak hand flat against his shoulder.

Brad moves his hand and watches blood very slowly colour in the fingermarks he’s left on the skin of Ray’s thigh, just below the bandages. He feels guilt, stinging like a bullet graze

“You definitely have to move, now,” Ray says, “sorry,” before he passes out, head listing to one side and a smile on his lips.

Brad’s fingers still under his hand and over his thigh.

Brad watches Ray breathe deeply for a minute, head turned to one side and lips parted, eyelashes dark and cheeks pale, but already more alive than he’d looked under the fluorescent lights of the warehouse.

The door opens and Brad’s M9 is in his hand on autopilot, pointed at Doc.

“Stow that shit, Colbert,” the Doc says, wagging his finger at Brad like he’s a dog that’s pissed on the rug, unconcerned by Brad’s gun aimed dead between his eyes. “Get the fuck out. Ray needs to sleep and unless you’re giving him a transfusion right now, you’re not helping his recovery.”

Doc glances at where Brad and Ray’s hands are linked, then at Ray’s bandages and the red rose spots dotting it down the middle.

He glares at Brad. “Did you let him _move_?”

Brad likes Doc Bryan, normally. He’s the very rare man in this business that has no secondary motivations, he’s honest and he speaks his mind. Brad likes that. When it’s not directed at him. If he hadn’t just saved Ray’s life, Brad would be inclined at this point to thank him for his advice and dole out some of his own about fucking and the horse he rode in on.

“No,” he says. He can’t muster more words to specify, just no. He’s not going. He look at Ray, eyes closed and face slack and easy, painkillers giving him an easy sleep. His fingers limp in Brad’s. Brad looks back at Doc Bryan and shrugs.

Doc Bryan does not look pleased.

“He’s asleep,” Brad says, but doesn’t say anything regarding leaving the room. He isn’t.

“See that he stays in bed, Brad, and _rests_. That means _doesn’t fucking move around_. Make him eat,” Doc says, frowning. He probably thinks Ray’s too skinny — Brad doesn’t disagree. “I’m not sure you understand how close that was. In all reality, Ray needs more than the little I could do for him here. He _might_ walk with a limp for months. For longer.”

“Thank you, Doc,” Brad says and meets Doc Bryan’s eyes until he looks away and leaves Brad alone with Ray.

* * *

Brad pulls up in front of Nate’s at six, the setting sun hot at his back as he parks his bike in the drop-off zone out front.

Nate's building is a monster made of glass, head to foot cool and reflective. Brad watches himself in the front doors, a shadowy image in his last clean shirt ( _Ray_ ), jeans, sweating in his bike jacket and boots.

It's still sticky as the previous night, the temperature dipping only marginally with the sun. It's hot and he's bothered, his back hurts from the day spent napping on the couch, a few hours of sleep broken up by glances into his bedroom at Ray (most of the day sound asleep on top of the covers, fingers dragging his borrowed shirt up as they pressed down into the elastic of his underwear).

Might not only have been the couch keeping Brad half-awake and restless.

It’s easier to put aside thoughts of his lips on Ray's (and hands, and teeth) now he’s sluiced off sweat and blood and brushed away the taste in a cold shower. Easy enough to think of other things (that the faint headache he has gets worse when he does think about it isn’t relevant).

Nate. He and Nate have a few things to discuss.

Most of which can be condensed down to a neat little question: _how much did you know?_ Why fail to mention that they had apparently knocked off Francis’s son in front of him? _Did_ Nate know?

Did he know that they were walking into a warehouse full of heavy machinery and back up?

Brad fingers creak the leather of his jacket and he unclenches them deliberately, stowing it in the Ducati’s pannier.

Brad's phone rings before he can buzz to be let up. _NATE_ , this display reads.

"Brad, Doc Bryan called."

Brad appreciates Nate skipping any small talk, and does likewise. He is not in the mood for fucking around.

"Are you going to let me in?" Brad asks.

"Should I?"

"That was an interesting little clusterfuck you dropped us into. I imagine you'll want to hear the full story," Brad says. He watches himself in the glass, expressionless.

“That isn’t what I asked. Should I?” Nate’s hesitating. If he hadn’t, Brad’s estimation of him would have lowered somewhat.

“Oh but Nate, I seem to remember you talking about how much you _trust_ me,” Brad doesn’t bother keeping the edge out of his voice, and watches the white line of his teeth appear in his shadowed reflection.

Brad isn’t going to do anything untoward — he isn’t even armed. He’s not going to bother telling that to Nate, though. He can prove his trust. Brad is enjoying Nate’s hesitation: it stems from intelligence, but there’s fear underneath and it’s satisfying and cools Brad’s ire.

Nate has to know, too, that if Brad wanted him dead he’d find a way. Right now what he wants his Nate to look him in the eye and tell him the truth. He’s not getting ahead of himself.

Nate laughs, short and humourless. Brad grins at his dark reflection in the glass.

“Come on up, then.”

The doors open as Brad approaches. Q-Tip stands aside to let him in and Christeson hovers in front of the elevator banks. They’re clearly downstairs to pat him down or to otherwise gauge his mood before they let him up to Nate.

That isn’t happening.

"Yo, we're meant to uh, frisk you and shit,” Q-Tip says, shifting on the spot uncomfortably.

Brad looks at him.

Q-Tip looks at the floor.

Christeson comes away from the elevators and claps a hand on Q-Tip's shoulder, and nods at Brad. They both keep a respectful distance as the elevator dings and Brad gets in.

* * *

Nate watches him as Brad sits down in front of his desk, blanks his face and fucking radiates calm.

“How is Ray?”

“Alive,” Brad says.

"What happened?"

“You don’t know?” Brad asks, still calm enough.

"I don’t,” Nate says and shrugs, “not entirely. I only know what Doc Bryan told me, and that we have recovered all three trucks.”

“When I give my word I mean it.”

Brad leans back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest, and they study each other for a moment.

Someone had fucked them over (fucked _Ray_ over), either Nate had had them or been fucked too. Brad's never been so acutely frustrated with the unreadable quality Nate has as right at this moment, staring across the wide desk at Nate’s cold blue eyes.

“Tell me?” Nate asks.

Brad does, from the first surprise of the sniper on the roof, down to Ray’s injury, and how they had apparently become targets of Francis MacIntyre’s vendetta, because they had taken out his son. On Nate’s word.

Nate sighs, looks at his hands. He looks genuinely unhappy for a moment. Then again, Nate is by definition a good actor. You don’t stay alive through what Nate has without being _good_.

He stands and walks around the table to lean on the edge of the desk. Brad recognizes it for the manipulative gesture it is, Nate mirrors his body language and without the expensive expanse of oak between them this seems more personal, as it had the night Nate had called them into this room to tell them about the job.

It works, on some level, despite Brad being conscious of it. Nate seems more honest on this side of the table.

“Before Godfather, there was an undercover job I took — my first. It was a quick job. Mike Wynn was my contact, he’d been with Francis for over a year when I came in. Mike Wynn was one of my best friends, Brad. Mike,” Nate glances at the ground briefly, then back at Brad with grief on his face Brad believes, “he was my family, he was the closest I’ve ever had to a big brother. Without him-- without Mike I wouldn’t have known how to survive. Francis MacIntyre killed Mike. He _shot him in the fucking head,_ Brad,” Nate spits the words with a venom and a tone Brad has never heard from him, something real. “I watched him do it. If that was Francis’s son you and Ray shot… I wasn’t sure he’d be there. I’m glad, though, Brad. I’m fucking ecstatic.” Nate’s cheeks are flushed as he finishes, and Brad is sure his eyebrows are raised, solely because he has never yet heard Nate swear so violently about anything.

He’s bordering on uncontrolled, and Brad is somewhat off-balance. He smiles at Brad. It’s not a happy smile. It’s so contrary to what Brad is used to, it gives Brad pause.

“Why didn’t you inform us of this?” Brad asks. _Any_ of it.

“I wasn’t sure he’d be there.”

Which doesn’t entirely answer Brad’s question, but he’s not going to push. If Nate doesn’t want to speak any further about this Mike Wynn, Brad won’t force it.

“Brad, if it was Ray —"

“It nearly fucking _was_ Ray,” Brad snaps. He takes Nate’s point, though. He’s already done several grossly unprofessional things today simply because someone made Ray bleed.

“I did not think Francis would do this, Brad. You have my word on that. I never thought it'd come back on _you_ Brad, not me. And I wasn't sure about the security intel Godfather handed me, and I'm sorry for that. The fact that they had back-up was a possibility I suspected, but. There was no other way to see." Nate pauses.

Brad listens, and waits him out. You can get a lot out of someone if you keep quiet, dole out the rope, and let them go. It’s something Brad is very good at.

Nate shifts from the desk and paces along its front slowly before apparently making a decision and glancing at Brad.

“Apart from the possibility that Godfather knew about the ambush and didn’t inform me, it just doesn't make sense for Godfather to do this to Patton." He pauses again, and looks away from Brad, and when he looks back he looks more like Brad is used to seeing him. "I have a lot of respect for Godfather's intelligence, but there was something about this that I disliked from the beginning. I don't know, Brad. He wants something from Patton, and it isn’t cigarettes.”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Brad says. "Could you not have shared this with me before now? You mentioned _trust_ , Nate," Brad asks.

“It’s not entirely about trust, Brad. It’s also about self-preservation. If you repeat what I just said then, well,” Nate’s lips quirk.

“Tell me something worth keeping secret,” Brad prompts. Nate wants to say more, Brad can see it in him.

“Whatever Godfather is doing." Nate pauses and looks, for a moment, his age, which Brad tends to forget is quite a few years younger than himself, "it isn’t how I would do it."

That’s not quite what Brad has expected, but it clicks something into place for Brad. Nate is walking a fine line. _They_ are walking a fine line here, Brad amends inside his own head: it feels right to think of himself as behind Nate in this.

Nate knows more than Brad does, and Brad is starting to get the feeling Nate knows something big.

Brad can't help smile, an acceptance of Nate’s apologies. Nate's definitely not telling Brad everything he knows, and Brad files that away, but for all he intellectually, logically knows trusting Nate further is a bad idea, there is something in his gut that says _yes_.

"To be frank, sir, whatever it is? You'd do it better.” It’s the easiest way to show Nate he’s forgiven. Brad doesn’t call anyone else _sir_ , and he is certain Nate has noticed that.

“Thank you, Brad. Does that mean you’ll take the next job?”

Nate smiles at him and Brad smiles back fully and with teeth this time, smiles because Nate’s got the balls to push. He’s impressed.

“What’s it entail?”

“More violence, I imagine. It’s entirely possible it will be another clusterfuck like the last, though we _will_ deal with Francis beforehand. That will not be a further problem,” Nate says. He leans back against the desk again. “The General runs on cancer and guns, this time Godfather wants the guns.”

“Why should we do another bullshit job for Godfather’s benefit?”

"Godfather wants it done, but I could ask Rudy and Pappy, or Poke. _I_ want you to do it. I know you may not want to hear it, but I _do_ trust you Brad. You’re _my_ men. I need time to think, and I need to know you’ll be there,” Nate says fiercely. He looks as dangerous right now as Brad has always imagined he is, somewhere under his unassuming, baby-faced exterior.

When Brad nods, he knows he is agreeing to something more than running a second job for Godfather. For Nate. They shake hands, Nate’s eyes clear as a summer sky as they meet Brad’s.

Brad knows he wouldn’t have agreed to this for Godfather, had Godfather personally asked Brad himself. Not to another potential fuck-up like the last job. Not with Ray hurt, not with the thought of that still turning his stomach to this moment. Ray, who he’d left sleeping, two of Doc Bryan’s pills on the bedside table next to a hopefully edible muffin and a glass of water.

“And Nate? Thanks to this monumentally retarded clusterfuck, I'm moving. Tomorrow,” Brad says.

“I’m sorry, Brad. Do you need a place? I can arrange it.”

“No,” Brad says. “I’m good, sir.”

So far as he’s decided Nate had not meant any harm this time he still doesn’t feel the need to have him know where he lives (or to be holed up in some soulless place like this under Godfather’s personal watch).

With the blood and Ray's wound and the truck, he's not fucking around however. He’ll pay his month’s rent and go quietly, take Ray home and spend a week at Ray's and make sure he doesn't fuck himself up any further — it's not just the thought of Ray's Ray-sized couch that makes that uncomfortable, but he can't leave him right now. Though he’s desperate to ride out of the city, and desperate for the oblivion of the sea.

“We’ll talk details later, Brad. Go back to Ray.”

Brad feels his face flush and doesn’t look back at Nate as he leaves. He hadn’t thought he was that obvious.

End (... for now).


End file.
